Fernando Alonso’s great streak of consecutive points finishes ended at the last Italian Grand Prix , where an alleged problem with the water pressure caused the Asturian’s Alpine A522 to lose power. The two-time champion equaled Kimi Raikkonen’s all-time record for most races in that race, but the forced retirement overshadowed a day of celebration on long faces inside his garage.
The same thing happened in the following test in Singapore, where thanks to an impressive classification he was placed at the top of the table and held the almighty Max Verstappen, who was stuck behind the Spaniard. A fault in his Renault engine made him unable to keep the Dutchman at bay any longer and he had to stop his car in one of the Marina Bay run-offs before even reaching the halfway point of the race.
As if that were not enough, a few laps later his teammate Esteban Ocon met the same fate with a similar problem, and was forced to get out of the Alpine well before the checkered flag.
On the occasion of the two retirements, the boss of the French team, Otmar Szafnauer , came out to explain what had happened, and although there are still many questions to be answered, he gave a first report: “Unfortunately we have had a double retirement at the Singapore Grand Prix today, which is a shame as we’ve been very competitive all weekend.
“It appears that we have experienced a similar power unit issue on both cars, which we will investigate in detail,” said Alpine’s US director. “It is important that we identify the cause of what has happened and that we put preventive measures in place to prevent it from happening again.”
In this way, those from Enstone will travel to the next appointment in Japan with a zero in their locker, in addition to seeing how their closest rival for fourth place in the constructors’ world championship, McLaren, has surpassed them thanks to a great performance which gave him 22 points, a figure that the French have never reached in the entire 2022 season.
Alpine’s best test was in Belgium, where Fernando Alonso finished fifth and Esteban Ocon was seventh, and that is something they want to repeat in the land of the Land of the Rising Sun: ” As for the development of our race, it has been a challenge with the dry conditions, and we were about to enter a window where we could have made the call for the slicks before our DNFs.”
“These days happen at the races from time to time and although it’s a disappointing feeling within the team right now, we have another race next weekend in Japan where we have a chance to recover,” Szafnauer said. “As a team we will take it easy, we are already looking forward to getting back to Suzuka and racing on a fantastic circuit.”
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