Alpine responded to Alonso’s complaints

Fernando Alonso finish the Japanese F1 GP from last weekend in 7th position, annoyed with the strategy of Alpine after seeing his team ignore his willingness to stop earlier in the latter part of the race to gain positions on a new intermediate tyre. The Asturian’s anger was palpable. He first showed it on the radio: “‘What a mistake, huh!’ I mean… strategically, what are you doing to me this year…”.

Later, in declarations to ‘AS’ in the press corral, he explained his complaints with a final irony: “The strategy did not work for us. We stopped late, with six laps to go (to ride in the new intermediates), I finished exactly where I started. I asked the radio to stop me earlier, the same time, but I don’t know. Now my microphone needs to be disconnected”.

“We would have stopped for ten or twelve more laps, but I don’t know what they were doing. We missed an opportunity”he said

“We stopped late to put in the intermediates and I lost a few positions, and then In the end we said stop and there were 6 laps to go I think, so I was a lap or two short of getting some positions”added the Spaniard to ‘DAZN F1’, clarifying that his last stop prevented him from catching up with Vettel, whom he passed at the very close finish line, just 11 thousandths after a great final battle.

replied Alan Permane

For this reason, Alan Permane, Alpine sports directorwants to clarify what happened and give an answer to the statements of the man from Oviedo in ‘Motorsport’. “If the race went as far as we thought it would go, did he catch Sebastian? Yes.”Perma said. In that sense, he admitted that after the fact, analyzing what happened, they stopped late, but explained that during the race it was very difficult to make the decision to stop earlier.

“Perhaps we should have stopped a little earlier, though it is not easy to predict.”, also because his tires will also go to the end of the stint. Yes, in retrospect yes, we could have stopped earlier. But I don’t think we realize how easy it is to catch people,” said the sports director of the French team.

“We spoke to him and he said: ‘Should we think about pitting?’ He had to overtake five cars, so we thought it wasn’t a good thing to do. And then I think we saw Zhou stop, and he was five seconds faster a lap. And we said, ‘Okay, yeah, let’s do that.’ We have to study what happened, but it is clear to me that if the race had lasted one more lap, as I think it should have, Alonso would have been ahead of Sebastian.”