03 September 2022

BWT Alpine F1 Team will line up for tomorrow’s Dutch Grand Prix with Esteban Ocon twelfth on the grid and Fernando Alonso thirteenth after a tight Saturday Qualifying at Zandvoort.

 

Both drivers were unable to progress through Q2 for only the third time this season and ended a tenth adrift of Q3 with just 0.008secs split between them.

 

Now, focus shifts to Sunday’s 72-lap Grand Prix as both drivers aim to progress into the points.

 

At a sold-out and raucous Zandvoort, both drivers entered Qualifying after finishing seventh and fourteenth in Free Practice 3. Fernando progressed through Q1 on one run, setting a lap time of 1min 11.667secs, with Esteban going through after improving his lap-time on his second effort.

 

In Q2, Esteban again was able to improve, this time from a 1min 12.222secs to a 1min 11.605secs but it was not enough to go through to the final round of Qualifying. Fernando could not improve on his second-lap due to traffic and he fell short on a 1min 11.613secs.

 

Esteban Ocon, P12, 1:11.605: “It’s been a tricky day for us and it’s not where we wanted to qualify. We struggled a bit with rear grip and seemed to lack a bit of pace compared to previous weekends, so we’ll definitely have a close look at that. We’ve been in worse positions in the past and points places are not far away. The weekend is far from finished. We hope for some more overtakes tomorrow and we’ll be giving it our all as always to have a solid race and get both cars back into the points.”

 

Fernando Alonso, P13, 1:11.613: “Unfortunately, it’s not been our day today. It was the traffic in Q2 that cost us from going into Q3, as we were half a second faster and could have been in sixth position. We could not show the true potential of the car, but these things can happen on a track as narrow as Zandvoort. Let’s see if we can use the pace of the car tomorrow and have a better result in the race when it counts. It’s not easy to overtake here as we saw last year, but we will push to score as many points as possible.”

 

Alan Permane, Sporting Director: “It was a disappointing Qualifying for the team today, we have work to do, but I’m sure we can recover and score points tomorrow. We line up twelfth and thirteenth on the grid, but with the modified DRS zone this year, overtaking should be possible. We will be doing our hard work between now and the race to identify the best strategy. Esteban has not been quite at one with his car this weekend, struggling with the rear end in general around the lap. Fernando’s result is definitely not a reflection of his performance, he had traffic on his second Q2 run and would have been comfortably into Q3 without this. We’ll do everything we can tomorrow to come away with both cars in the points and, the way we’ve been racing at recent events, I think achieving that is certainly possible.”