While Sergio Pérez and Carlos Sainz caused Monaco’s qualifying to be stopped in the Portier curve, another car was just 100 meters away as the crow flies: almost at the same time Fernando Alonso had also crashed his Alpine in the Mirabeau. Thanks to the demolition, he still managed seventh place.
He attributes his accident to a lack of concentration: “I braked too late and then locked the wheels,” says Alonso. “Coming back to that, I could have used the run-off but I thought I could make the turn. I didn’t.”
“I first apologized to the team because every mistake this year costs money from the budget limit,” says the Spaniard. “It’s difficult to accept, so I’m not exactly proud of my qualifying. I hope I can do better tomorrow.”
Lucky in disguise: Alonso would not have been able to finish his lap anyway due to the red flag. As he had just crashed his car into the wall, his engineer told him on the radio that there was a red flag at turn 8 due to an accident. “But I said, ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m already in the wall.'”
“Thanks to the development of the track, fifth place might have been possible”
Before that, the 40-year-old was quite competitive. His first time in Q3 was even enough for fifth place before he was intercepted by Lando Norris and George Russell. “It was actually pretty good,” he says. “I even had two sets of tires left in Q3 because Q1 was easier than I thought.”
And because he had already taken fifth place with the first set, he thought he could get the same with the second set. “Thanks to the development of the track, fifth place might have been possible,” he says. “But I didn’t finish the round.”
Alpine already had some problems at the scene of the accident on Friday and seemed to be quite restless. Changes to the set-up had brought an improvement towards Saturday. “Yesterday we struggled a bit, especially with the front end and the bouncing, but today we felt a little better with the car,” says Alonso.
“We were able to push, and that’s how we improved in every session. Our starting position wasn’t ideal, but I think the team made the right changes to the car,” he says.
From his starting position, Alonso is hoping for a dry race on Sunday, “even if it’s boring for you,” as he says. “But it’s much easier for us to run the race. When it rains, everything is a gamble. Let’s see if we’re lucky.”