Alonso was left out in Q2, part 11th in the Miami GP, and acknowledges that this Saturday he aspired to something better: “The car was fast, it was good, but it was a traffic problem. I found the Ferrari at turn 11 and he let me pass at turn 15. I lost half a second. Giving away half a second had a very high cost in the face of this equality”. He refers to a meeting with Sainz, which was not reported by his engineers. “We could have been sixth or seventh and we are not. But it will be a good test for us. We’ll see in the race, because normally we go better on Saturdays and not so well on Sundays, and we’ve been working in the last few days with the ‘set-up’ to try to change that”, says Fernando. In any case, the points are distributed Sundays.
All on a bad day for Alpine, because Ocon was unable to participate in qualifying after a serious accident in practice. Alonso comments on his impressions regarding the particularities of the circuit: “We are in the car and we know what it feels like when you touch the wall. Carlos was quite clear, it is not right that there is a wall and not another type of protection. It’s very difficult to go off the line, it’s like gravel. It will be difficult. We have already said that it is not an asphalt like that of Formula 1, we will try to put on a good show but there is for next year hopefully we will have an asphalt like all the circuits in the World Championship. The tarmac is breaking up outside the corners and there is only one line.”