“Unfortunately on car 14, always these things happen, so one more,” Fernando Alonso feels his retirement in Abu Dhabi is the ‘summary of the year’
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Fernando Alonso
In his final race for Alpine, Fernando Alonso retired before half-distance in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. It was his sixth retirement of the season, a frustrating end to a frustrating season. While there has been no real lack of performance from the Spaniard, there has also been no lack of reliability issues, and it is some other grievances such as ‘not receiving enough love’ that led him to move to Aston Martin.
Alonso had started qualified P11 but was promoted to P10 due to Daniel Ricciardo’s grid penalty. As he had said he would, he ‘took care’ of Sebastian Vettel at the start, while his teammate Esteban Ocon and the German battled it out. He had been running P10 until another engine issue forced him to retire. After his retirement in Mexico, he had said: “For car 14 there are always reliability issues.”
As quoted by Motorsport.com, he echoed this answer, this time in relation to Abu Dhabi: “Unfortunately another engine problem, so it has been the summary of the year. Unfortunately on car 14, always these things happen, so one more.” As stated before, he’s retired six times from races this season, and five of those retirements have been mechanical.
Fernando Alonso happy to start a new project with ‘hopefully more luck’
Fernando Alonso’s time at Alpine is at an end: Next year, he will drive for Aston Martin and partner Lance Stroll. As you may know, this is not his first stint with the organization: He had driven for Alpine in two different stints, back in the 2000s, and it was with the French team that he won his championships. While he is grateful to the team, he is not sad that he’s leaving.
He said: “I’m happy that it’s finished. As you know, there are facts that this year have been against us a little bit in car 14. Six DNFs, but also [ones] they don’t count as a DNF but they were DNF, like Australia, the qualifying problem. The sprint race in Austria, I didn’t even start the race, and things like that.”
Alonso is looking forward to starting his time with Aston Martin, which he hopes will have ‘more luck’: “So I think there are nine or 10 reliability issues, which at this level is obviously not acceptable. And they all happen to my car. So I’m happy to finish and start on Monday the seat fit with Aston, Tuesday the tyre test, and hopefully a new project with more luck.”
According to him, while there is nothing that he can do about the ‘frustrating’ of today, he will always think of Alpine (and Renault) with fond memories – he won both of his championships there and spent nine years of his life in Formula 1 driving for the French team. He wishes them the best for next year. It’s possible that the teams may be in direct competition next year, as Aston Martin look to make a step up.
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Aniket Tripathi
(1002 Articles Published)