For Fernando Alonso, Austria’s sprint was over before it even started. When all the competitors made their way to the formation lap, the Alpine of the two-time world champion was still jacked up with electric blankets on the tires in the grid.
But that was not a mistake by the team like Ralf Schumacher once did in Belgium, but the team knew that Alonso would not be able to start. “Five minutes before the start we had a complete blackout in the car and couldn’t start the car,” explains Alonso. “We then tried using an external battery, but that didn’t work either.”
Because there was a second formation lap after Guanyu Zhou had a problem, Alpine had time in the pit lane to connect a second battery. But even that didn’t work, so the A522 had to be pushed into the garage. “There must be something bigger,” says Alonso. “We have to try to get that under control for tomorrow.”
According to team boss Otmar Szafnauer, this is an unspecified electrical problem.
“The weekend is over”
On Sunday, the Alpine pilot will have to start from 19th place and has practically given up the race: “It’s over. The weekend is over,” he dismisses. “We saw that there are trains of cars here and you cannot overtake.”
He anticipates a frustrating race on a DRS train. “So we’ll have to try to be creative with the strategy and maybe have some luck with the safety car,” he says. “But I think it will be a very, very long race behind many cars.”
Up to 70 points more?
Alonso is powerfully frustrated after the next problem. He has just 28 points to his credit, teammate Esteban Ocon 42 – although Alonso leads 7:4 in the qualifying duel. He says he’s currently racing at his best level – “Maybe 2012 level and I’ve got 20 something points. That’s amazing!”
He calculates that Alpine has lost “maybe 70 points”. “60 if we count all the failures, bad luck and reliability,” said Alonso. “Obviously it’s frustrating when we don’t get all the points, but I’d be sadder if it was my own mistakes and I spun or crashed.”
And it would also be worse if he was fighting for the championship. “Of course I’d rather have 60 or 70 points than 20, but then we’d still be 120 points behind Max. So it doesn’t change much,” said the Spaniard. “Only the people who just look at the results get the wrong impression of 2022 because I think it was outstanding for the Auto 14 crew.”