Fernando Alonso You already know what to expect this season in Formula 1. The Alpine driver has a car that is a missile at one lap, but in the race it has gaps everywhere, including increasingly questionable reliability. The Spaniard did not have to leave for the second time in four Grand Prix in this 2022 season after a slight touch with Mick Schumacher, who avenged his father and He destroyed the right pontoon of the two-time world champion.
There was not much hope in Alpine seeing the poor performance in the race of an Esteban Ocon who finished fourteenth. It is true that Fernando Alonso had the new flat bottom and that circumstance allowed everyone to hope being fifth in practice on Friday. Things went wrong for the French team in the sprint race with a totally disastrous start for an Alonso who lost up to two positions. Later in the competition he was passed by two other rivals showing that race pace is a problem that must be solved at the Enstone factory.
The contract case for Alpine seems to be a Mercedes team that is a disaster in the classifications, but later in the race they find consistency and solidity. To show an example of a George Rusell who started eleventh and finished fourth after a great exhibition that places him as the first trick of the ‘Silver Arrows’ after a race in which Lewis Hamilton returned to run out of points. The Briton, for the moment, is limited to asking his team for more work, but it hurts to see him so far from the best.
The big winner of the weekend was a Max Verstappen who won the Ferrari home race restoring their options to revalidate the World title. The Dutchman enjoyed seeing charles leclerc making several mistakes that relegated him to sixth place, while Carlos Sainz was once again left out of the game in the first round -as happened in Australia- after a contact with Daniel Ricciardo. The man from Madrid adds two zeros in a row after having renewed his contract with Ferrari until 2024.
The next race will take us in two weeks to the newly opened circuit in Miami. There we will see if Alpine has been able to solve its reliability problems in the race, while Leclerc already knows that he will have to deal with a Verstappen who left Ferrari’s house with a booty of 34 points. He not only won the race, but also scored the race for sprint, fastest lap and pole position. Mad Max was a prophet in the land of Ferrari.