Fernando Alonso seemed destined for a decent amount of points at the Marina Bay circuit, having consolidated his sixth place in the early stages of the race, before an engine failure knocked him out.
This retirement, with team-mate Esteban Ocon also suffering an engine failure during the race, opened the door for McLaren to overtake Alpine in the fight for fourth place in the Constructors’ championship.
In light of this, Alonso is convinced that the number of points lost this year has been excessive.
“I think we were missing about 50 points and now we have lost eight more,” he explained. “So that’s at least 58 or 60 points in a year, which is really unacceptable for my car.”
“If you put me 60 points more in the standings and reduce 10 or something like that to the others, because you have to count that too, my championship would be much better and I’d be close to Mercedes too.”
“This is probably the most accurate picture of the performance we are achieving this year, which I am very proud of. Even today we fought for the top five or six places. But the ranking does not confirm our performance.”
Fernando Alonso, Alpine F1 Team, arrives at the track
Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images
Alonso is currently ninth in the drivers’ championship with 59 points. 60 points more would take him to seventh place in the overall standings with 119 points, behind Lewis Hamilton, who instead has 170.
Although Alonso’s engine failure occurred after the Spaniard chose not to follow his rivals, who fitted new power units in the Belgian and Italian Grand Prix, Fernando does not think this was a factor. affected what went wrong in Singapore.
“I think the engine mileage was fine,” he said. “Esteban also had a problem and he has a newer engine. So I don’t think the problem is due to that.”
“But surely in the next races I will have to fit a new engine. We’ll see when. So yes, there are other points that we will lose.”
While the Alpine’s reliability hasn’t been great this season, Alonso’s teammate Esteban Ocon believes the company has done the right thing in pursuing above all performance with the A522.
“This weekend was not good for us in terms of reliability because we retired with both cars, but I think with the new regulations, and with such major changes, we had to push and run the car.”
“We can count on a fast car again next week. So that’s what I’m looking at, more than the rest.”
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