Fernando Alonso, resigned, was 17th in the Australian GP. He came to lap fourth, before stopping in the pits, because he chose to start with the hard tires in order to delay his wheel change. But the safety car made him lose his advantage on the track and the virtual safety car twenty laps from the end forced him to stop and go behind a train of cars with DRS, impossible to fight. The Spaniard spoke to the media present at Albert Park after the race.
“I have no words, honestly, it is difficult to accept that everything has gone wrong so far. But hey, there are three races and there are twenty left, luck will compensate sooner or later in these 23 races and another day we will be lucky. But yes, we lost a guaranteed sixth in Saudi Arabia, here before the safety car we were aiming for sixth or seventh before the safety car. if we take into account what happened in qualifying, the podium was easy considering that Max was left out. With George on the podium, I think we were quite a bit quicker than Mercedes around this circuit. We missed an opportunity,” says Alonso, 14th in the World Championship with only two points despite the good feeling with the Alpine.
“The pace was good, I started hard with the opposite strategy. When the medium started to suffer, I pushed and the car felt good. Sixth or seventh was possible. The ideal strategy was a hard-medium, stopping on the lap 42 or something like that, but the safety car on lap 24 regrouped the pack and goodbye strategy.”. “It was difficult, but when we got out of the safety car there were four cars ahead with DRS. If they are one by one, you overtake them, but like this… it’s hard, but it is what it is, we can’t look back. Ímola will be another opportunity”, he summed up about the race.
