Fernando Alonso's championship will look 'close even to Mercedes' without Alpine's engine failures this season

Fernando Alonso criticized his Alpine F1 team's reliability issues this year. The Spaniard believes that he lost too many points owing to his car issues alone. He claimed that had the machinery been reliable, he would have been closer to Mercedes.

The two-time world champion made calculations post his 2022 F1 Singapore Grand Prix retirement, pointing out that:

“If you put me 60 points more in the standings, and you reduce 10 or something to the others because you would take points from those as well, my championship will look much better and close even to Mercedes. So that is probably more accurate of the performance that we are putting this year, which I’m very proud of.”

Fernando Alonso was heavily disappointed with the points he has lost this season, saying:

“I think it was around minus 50 [points], so now we have another eight. So it’s minus 58 points or minus 60 in a year, which is really unacceptable on my car.”

Fernando Alonso raced in his record-breaking 350th race in Singapore. Sadly, he faced an unfortunate engine failure and was one of the six cars to not finish. Later on, his teammate Esteban Ocon faced a similar fate and was also out of the race.

"El Nano," however, does not blame the DNF on his previous refusal to take fresher power units. He pointed out how Ocon, despite the new engine, still couldn't finish his race.

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Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon's DNFs were possible power unit issues

Alpine faced a tough time during the 2022 F1 Singapore GP. The team faced a double DNF and to add to their injury, McLaren scored double points. In their fight for fourth place in the constructors' title, this might prove to be fatal for the French outfit.

Team boss Otmar Szafnauer, however, feels that the outfit can still recover. He said:

“A pity as we’ve been very competitive all weekend. In terms of the progress of our race, it was challenging with the drying conditions and we were about to enter a window where we could have made the call for dry tyres before our retirements. These days happen in racing from time to time and while it’s a disappointing feeling within the team now, we have another race next weekend in Japan where we have the opportunity to recover.”

Fernando Alonso might take a new engine ahead of the upcoming Japanese GP. This will mean a possible back-of-the-grid start for the Spaniard soon. Surely, taking that fourth in the constructors' championship will only get intense with the remaining races.