27/05/2022
NEWS STORY
BWT Alpine F1 Team returned to the legendary streets of Monaco today as Practice got underway for this weekend's Monaco Grand Prix. Fernando Alonso ended the day in eighth with Esteban Ocon eighteenth on the leaderboard as the team looks ahead to finding improvements ahead of tomorrow's crucial Qualifying session.
After last weekend's double points finish, both Fernando and Esteban looked to begin their Monaco weekend strongly under hot and dry conditions in the Principality.
Fernando completed 28 laps in Free Practice 1 with his best time, a 1min 15.749secs, slotting him into thirteenth with Esteban on a 1min 16.315secs after 24 laps of the 3.337km circuit.
For Free Practice 2, both drivers executed their run plan on the demanding armco-lined track, beginning with runs on Mediums, followed by Softs, in between a short red-flag delay. To round off a productive Friday, both drivers ran high fuel with Esteban trialling Mediums and Fernando on Softs.
Esteban Ocon: "It's good to be back driving in Monaco and discover the challenges that these new cars bring on such a specific track like this. It's clear there are some improvements we need to make to be where we want to be this weekend with regards to performance. We learned a lot today with different set-ups between the cars and now there is plenty of work to do overnight in order for us to be in a better position for tomorrow. It will be important to get it right as we know how crucial qualifying is in Monaco. There's more to come from me, so I'm looking forward to more practice tomorrow afternoon."
Fernando Alonso: "Monaco is always different to other tracks as you need to find confidence in the car. FP1 was a little bit messy for us, but in FP2 we started to dial in my car. There is still more to come as we experienced some inconsistent balance here and there that we need to fix, as well as trying to understand the tyres a bit more for qualifying as getting a good position on the grid is obviously the main subject of the weekend. There's some work to do, but it's always special to drive here with a lot of adrenaline every lap."
Pat Fry, Chief Technical Officer: "The Monaco Grand Prix weekend always presents some unique challenges for the cars, drivers and engineers. Today's practice was certainly a challenging one especially for the new 2022 cars where it's a fine balance in setting up the car in a small optimal window. Fernando was slightly happier with his car today than Esteban, so we have some data to work through there to understand the differences. We, like all teams, have some further learning to do on the tyres on high fuel. Overall, it's not all been plain sailing but we're confident that we can delve through the data and find improvements tomorrow ahead of Qualifying as we know grid position here is often key to a successful weekend."
Check out our Friday gallery from Monaco, here.