24 April 2022

BWT Alpine F1 Team ended its 2022 points scoring streak in Imola, after a frustrating Emilia Romagna Grand Prix saw Esteban Ocon finish fourteenth, while Fernando Alonso retired his car after damage from a lap one collision.

 

In the first wet race of the season, both Alpine drivers managed to gain positions during incidents in the opening laps. In these exchanges, Fernando was hit on the right side of his car on the exit of Turn 3, and the resulting impact left damage to the sidepod, and floor.

 

Unfortunately, the damage was too severe, and Fernando was forced to retire a few laps later.

 

Esteban spent his race battling for the last points scoring position and found himself running in eleventh for most of the race. His chances of finishing inside the top ten were then hampered, when he received a five-second time penalty for an unsafe release at his one and only pit-stop for Medium tyres.

 

Esteban crossed the line in eleventh, but after the time penalty was applied, he ended up in fourteenth position.

 

Esteban Ocon, started P16, finished P14:

 

“It was a frustrating race for us in the end where we’ve not scored any points. For me, it’s been a tricky one since the beginning and the Qualifying result compromised the rest of my weekend so if you think about it, where we ended up today before the penalty is not too bad. We lacked a bit of race pace and in the end we were not quick enough to get into the points even without the five second penalty. It’s a really tight pit-lane but we’ll be looking at exactly what happened in the debrief tonight to see if it could’ve been avoided. We’ll learn and move on from this one, and I’m already looking forward to Miami.”

 

Fernando Alonso, started P9, finished DNF

 

“It was another unfortunate race for us this season. We made a decent start and moved up to eighth but there was a lot of damage on the right side of my floor and on the sidepod, so we had no choice but to retire. It’s unlucky as a small brush with Mick [Schumacher], which wasn’t intentional, destroyed our car and race. After Australia I feel that I could have scored 20 or 30 points in the championship, and I have only two. It’s unlucky! It’s a long season and there are plenty of points still to score.”

 

Laurent Rossi, CEO Alpine:

 

“Plain and simple, this weekend was a disappointing one for the team and it’s the first race of the season where we leave without scoring points. We must make sure this does not happen again this year as we have much stronger potential than that. As a team there are many areas we must improve, and we must also eradicate errors quickly if we are to achieve our ambitious goals. While we feel frustrated by today’s result, we will count on it as additional motivation to not have this feeling again during the year. I’m confident in the team to keep working hard and we absolutely must bounce back next time in Miami.”