Hard, very hard he showed himself otmar szafnauerboss Alpine, after qualifying for the sprint this Saturday at Interlagos. The former director of Aston Martin charged against Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon after both collided in the early stages and were handicapped for the rest of the race.
“Both Esteban and Fernando have to do a better job to complement the fantastic effort of the team by avoiding incidents on the track. Both pilots have disappointed the team. I expect more from them tomorrow,” Otmar said.
24 hours later, everything changed: after starting from 17th place, Alonso reached fifth placewhile Or with finished in the eighth, leaving the ‘battle’ against McLaren after the abandonment of Lando Norris.
After the race, the Asturian spoke about what happened on Saturday: “Yesterday (Saturday) what happened happened, we both made mistakes and I accept the one on the straight, although I think the penalty is extremely harsh“.
“We had the same accident in Portimao (2021) with Kimi (Raikkonen) and Giovinazzi and nothing happened. I take the blame for that, but the races are on Sunday and anything can happen”, added Fernando in statements collected by ‘As’.
Next, he wanted to respond to Szafnauer’s accusations and defended that his fight with Esteban Ocon in the two years they have been together at Alpine has been “clean”.
“In two years we have made a mistake, which was this Saturday. We are blamed for many things, okay, but we try to help Alpine always score the maximum points, as we did in Brazil,” said the Oviedo native.
“It’s two clean years. There were fights, because we always started together, we classified close. One contact in two years. If people want to make something big out of it, fine, but in the race we take back what we did on Saturday,” he added.
5 points They separate Esteban Ocon from Fernando Alonso in the Formula 1 World Cup standings with one race to go and, with the constructors’ championship practically closed, in Abu Dhabi anything can happen.