F1 | Alonso on the contact with Sainz: “I raised from the outside, he didn't”

After the splendid third position achieved yesterday in the sprint qualifying, Fernando Alonso knew that it would not be an easy sprint, given a pace that was potentially not in line with that of his rivals.

In the first part of the race, also taking advantage of a sort of waiting phase, the Spaniard managed to remain in second position, but suffered the inevitable overtaking by Max Verstappen after seven laps. In the subsequent stages, the Aston Martin driver remained steadily in third place trying to keep potentially faster cars behind him, such as the Ferraris of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, as well as the Red Bull of Sergio Perez.

Initially, taking advantage of a good exit from the long bend that leads onto the straight, Alonso was able to gain that small useful margin to maintain his position, but after a couple of unsuccessful attempts, Sainz attempted to attack the outside of the bend seven with a nice maneuver that seemed to put him in front.

However, precisely in those phases the two came into slight contact, with Sainz's front wing touching Alonso's right front tyre, causing a puncture which then forced the Asturian to return to the pits for a tire change . Before the tire began to lose pressure, however, the two continued their duel: after raising his foot on the outside of turn eight, the Aston Martin driver threw himself back onto the inside of turn nine, attempting a maneuver with which he then took his Ferrari compatriot off the track.

“Certainly to have this pace, we ask a lot of the tires and we experience significant degradation, we run out of them quickly. It's not our race pace, so we have to push to keep up with the rivals' pace, but this leads us to run out of tyres. In the end we had a good group of cars behind us that we could no longer keep behind us,” Alonso explained to Sky Sport Italia at the end of the sprint.

“It was difficult to keep the whole group behind, in the end I think they would have passed me and I would have finished seventh or so, which I don't know if it's two points, so we didn't even lose much. It's just a shame that we withdrew.”

Although he was satisfied with the progress of his race, given that in the end he realistically would have finished in seventh place behind not only the two Ferrari drivers, but perhaps also behind Lando Norris, the Aston Martin Spaniard did not spare a veiled criticism of the driver of the Cavallino, guilty of having triggered the contact because he did not lift his foot when he was on the outside.

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin AMR24

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“We made several turns in parallel. Six, seven, the fast parallel curve. On the eight I went to the outside and he opened the line a lot to close me down, so I did the same on the nine, I went to the inside to open the line.”

“In turn eight I gave up so as not to touch each other, in turn nine he didn't give up and we touched. But in the end it's a sprint and it was a lot of fun. There were still a few points to lose for us in the sprint, seventh or eighth is one or two points. Let's see tomorrow, I think our natural position will be much further back,” Alonso then added. In reality, Sainz himself paid for his compatriot's attempt in turn nine, because he ended up beyond the limits of the track on the dirt, losing his position on Perez and damaging his tyres.

Although there is still a qualifying to be written, the Asturian is well aware that tomorrow's race will potentially be much more complicated than the sprint, because there will be no rain to shake the grid as happened on Friday afternoon: the objective however, it is to have a good race and bring home more points.