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Fernando Alonso has had a rocky weekend, to say the least. He got off to a flying start in qualifying on Saturday, which came to a devastating end, leaving the Spaniard to start the Australian Grand Prix from tenth place. Luck was still not on his side today as he once again lost out on the chance to score strong points for the team despite having better pace than the likes of Mercedes.
As reported by Motorsport, Alonso shared his disappointment from the weekend, saying:
“Speechless, to be honest. 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 20 to go. 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.”
The poorly-timed safety car prevented Alonso from securing a better score today as a result of the untimely pit-stop strategy adopted by Alpine. Reflecting on his poor fortune so far, he added, saying:
“But at the moment we lost P6 in Saudi guaranteed. 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 [Verstappen] out. Beating George [Russell] to the podium, I think we were quite fast, a lot faster than the Mercedes in this circuit, so we lost an opportunity.”
This was certainly a weekend to forget for the Alpine driver. Despite driving a sensational race in Saudi Arabia, he suffered a heartbreaking DNF, leaving him with no points from the race weekend. He currently stands in fourteenth place in the drivers' standings, eighteen points behind his teammate Esteban Ocon.
"Imola is another opportunity" – Fernando Alonso hopeful of a better weekend in Italy
After two consecutive race weekends of bad luck for Fernando Alonso, the 40-year-old is hopeful of a turnaround in his fortune ahead of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
Emphasizing that while lots went wrong today, the team will only look ahead, he said:
“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.”
Alpine currently stands two points behind McLaren in the constructors' standings in fifth place.
