In Mexico City, Fernando Alonso failed to finish the race for the fifth time this season due to technical problems – this time one of the six engine cylinders in his car failed. Alpine boss Otmar Szafnauer said the team deliberately relied on high power at the expense of reliability, hoping to eliminate technical issues during the season.
Otmar Szafnauer: “The race in Mexico City went exactly as we planned. This doesn’t happen often, but this time events have developed in line with our strategy. The riders started on Medium tires and then tried to complete as many laps as possible on this set. We knew that this composition is great for the race, but it was important to have a good start.
The team understood that if we stay ahead of McLaren, we can stay ahead because our pace is faster. In addition, we were able to get ahead of Valtteri Bottas, even though he qualified much higher than us. After we got ahead of them all, it was time to keep up the pace.
However, this proved difficult. Fernando, for example, drove a second slower than he could to keep the brakes from overheating. We knew it wouldn’t be easy for him to finish. As for Esteban, he did a great job and was ahead of the McLaren drivers.
Fernando’s race ended due to engine cylinder problems. We did everything we could to get him to the finish – he stayed on track for 13 or 14 laps with a problem, but in the end he had to stop.
After the finish, Fernando Alonso complained that most credit for technical problems would fall on his car, not his partner’s, but Safnauer assures that this is nothing more than a coincidence.
“We don’t have a team preparing engines for Esteban’s car, and we don’t have a team preparing engines for Fernando’s car,” said Otmar Szafnauer. – All our employees are working on the engines of both machines.
We have made a conscious decision to increase engine efficiency and address reliability issues as soon as they are identified, as the FIA allows. However, don’t think that we deliberately made the engine unreliable. At some point we decided to increase the power because we knew there would be a ban on refining the engine until 2026.
Source: F1 News
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