11/04/2022
NEWS STORY
Robbed of a prime grid position in qualifying, Fernando Alonso's misfortune continued into Sunday's race leaving the two-time world champion "speechless".
But for a technical failure which caused him to crash on Saturday afternoon, few doubt that Fernando Alonso could have put his Alpine on the front row for Sunday's race.
Starting the race from tenth, the Spaniard opted for the hard tyre while those ahead of him all went for the medium.
His long opening stint strategy appeared to be working out for him, until Sebastian Vettel's encounter with the barriers brought out the safety car, thereby allowing his rivals to take advantage and pit.
However, now running fourth, Alonso didn't follow suit and though he was able to hold on to fourth for a few more laps he slowly began to drop down the order, and by the time he finally stopped in lap 39 he was effectively out of the picture.
"I'm speechless, to be honest," said the Spaniard at race end. "It's hard to accept that everything is going in the wrong way at the moment.
"But it's only three races in the championship, still twenty to go," he added. "Luck, I guess, is going to compensate sooner or later in the 23 races and we will be in other occasions lucky. I guess so.
"We lost P6 in Saudi guaranteed," he continued, "here I think we were looking for P6 or P7 before the safety car. And, obviously, if we take into account yesterday, the podium today was very easy with Max out.
"Beating George to the podium, I think we were quite fast," he insisted, "a lot faster than the Mercedes at this circuit, so we lost an opportunity."
To compound the Spaniard's misery, after finally pitting he rejoined the race at the back of the 'DRS-train' headed by a defiant Lance Stroll.
"It was difficult," admitted the Spaniard. "We exited the pitstop and there were four cars in front of us with a DRS train. If they are one-by-one you pass them, but when they are four and they all open the DRS, it was impossible. So we killed the tyres.
"As I said, it's tough but it is the way it is. We cannot look back, only look in front of us, and Imola is another opportunity."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Melbourne, here.