The podium won by Fernando Alonso in the last test in Qatar – the first in seven years – he had rekindled the enthusiasm of the Spanish bi-world champion, eager to reconfirm himself also in Saudi Arabia with another positive performance. Although the race has not yet started on the new and very fast circuit of Jeddah, the objectives of the pilot ofAlpine however, they seem to get complicated already at the end of qualifying, thanks to a 11th place final that pushed the Asturian out of Q3.
The 40-year-old, after having seriously risked elimination even from Q2 with the 15th and last place available to access the second phase, then touched on access to the third and definitive ‘group’, the decisive one for the assignment of the pole position . A disappointment that Alonso himself expressed this way once the Saudi qualifications were over: “It was a tough session for us tonight – the former Ferrari driver analyzed – yesterday the car was fast and had a good balance, but today, both in FP3 and in qualifying, the car was different. On a street circuit, going close to the walls is enough difficult to continue when you are not perfectly comfortable with balancing. We have seen that in Formula 2 there have been more overtaking than expected – he added – so, even though we imagine that it will be more difficult for us to stay in the slipstream at such high speeds, we remain hopeful of catching up tomorrow. I hope to have a clean race, also because our goal is to score as many points as possible in order to keep fifth place in the constructors’ standings ”.
Different speech, however, for the second Alpine of Esteban Ocon, with the French who was able to enter Q3 with the 9th place final, in front of an Antonio Giovinazzi in great shape on this track. A result not to be underestimated for the winner of the Hungarian GP, as underlined by the one who will start from the fifth row of the penultimate round of the world championship: “I am quite happy with today’s qualifying with this placement – he has declared – I am satisfied with my laps and, as a team, we have worked very well this weekend. I have faith in the car, which is needed here to really push even with little fuel. It’s a shame that we couldn’t put both cars in Q3, but we did find some speed in FP2, and we hope to be able to keep it in the race so that Fernando and myself can get as many points as possible. It will be a long race tomorrow – he concluded – it’s very hot, and it is a physically demanding track, perhaps like that of Singapore. But I can’t wait. We’ll see what we can do from ninth on the grid, but we’ll give our all for another solid team result ”.
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