Fernando Alonso: We didn’t miss a single opportunity

At the end of the penultimate stage of the season, Fernando Alonso returned to the top ten, despite not having achieved a single point in the previous four races. But yesterday, despite all the shortcomings of the AMR24 car, which again appeared in Qatar, and Fernando complained about this to the team on the radio, he was able to take 7th place.

“Great result! “We didn’t earn any points at all after Singapore and now we dream of finishing at least 9th or 10th, behind the four top teams,” Alonso shared with the Spanish press after the race. – And yet we managed to take advantage of the opportunity and reach 7th place,

During the race there were derailments, the safety car came onto the track and Lando Norris was fined. With such a development of events, some opportunities always appear, and we have not missed any. I am happy for our entire team!”

During the race he was afraid that the car did not have enough speed on the straights, which had consequences especially after restarts.

“Yes, we know what this is about,” Madrid newspaper quoted Marca Fernando as saying. – Since last year the car has been driving strangely in the first laps of the race or after the period when the safety car was on the track. Even if you change the settings to get the best possible acceleration, or if the green flags appear, the hybrid part of the powertrain does not kick in.

Extra battery energy is only released late, and of course when you are surrounded by other cars, and you do not have 160 hp at your disposal in the first seconds of acceleration. extra power, you become an easy target.

I think we know what the problem is and thought it was solved, but it looks like it has resurfaced because I lost maybe two or three positions at the start. Without the safety car I would still have lost them later in the race and that would have been very frustrating.”

Alonso specifically praised the Aston Martin team for its clear action during the double pit stop, when a safety car came onto the track, and it was a kind of improvisation: “I don’t know how such a decision was made, but the point is that I was already in the last sector of the lap when an engineer contacted me by radio.

Moreover, it seemed to me that making a second pit stop immediately was too risky, because it meant losing position, because it is very difficult to overtake on this circuit. Personally, I probably wouldn’t risk going to the pits again (to switch from hard tires to Medium), but the team knew better.

Her performance is commendable, everyone did well this weekend, was able to improve the car after the sprint and before qualifying and also used good tactics. Despite the failures in the previous stages, when the car did not work well, no one gave up, so the team is to be congratulated. Now let’s see if we can have an equally great race in Abu Dhabi.”