After a race controlling the pace and keeping his rivals behind, Alonso left the Mexican GP due to a problem with your engine which dropped him to ninth position and then took him to park the vehicle.
The Asturian pilot did not hide his anger and frustration when he got off the car, nor the disappointment I felt in the mediabut since Alpine They have been quite understanding with this, even going so far as to apologize as well they denied sabotage to Alonso. And it is that, when asking Otmar Szafanuer, team principal, about Alonso’s frustration, said: “We apologize to Fernando. You always feel frustrated when a race is spoiled, whether you’re ahead or behind.
He added that «There was no risk, I had the points assured, without pressure, and that makes it even more frustrating. So I understand him.”
Alonso’s engine failure at the Mexican GP
As far as the engine failure in the single-seater of AlonsoSzafnauer detailed: “Unfortunately, Fernando suffered a cylinder failure on lap 52 and had to make do with just five cylinders, meaning a significant lack of power, to try to stay within the points.”
“In the end, the problem was not sustainable and had to remove the car. We know reliability will be the key in our championship battle and it’s something that has let us down after showing such a strong level of performance in recent races. I am confident that we can correct these problems for the last two appointments of the course », he explained.
It is worth mentioning that the director also declared that at the Hermanos Rodríguez Autodrome, Alonso rode slower than he could in order to manage the engine and tires, in an effort that was ruined: «Fernando was rolling one second per lap slower than what I could have done. Just managing the temperatures, the brakes…”
“But that cylinder problem came, which forced him to stop. We tried to get him home, but in the end he couldn’t. He had that problem for about 13 or 14 laps before we stopped him,” he said.
About whether Alonso had already lost that engine, Szafnauer confirmed that: «Anyway that engine was not going to work again. However, the main cause is not yet known. It could have been a spark plug, it could have been a piston ring, it could have been excessive vibration. I do not know”. While waiting for the analysis, in Alpine they believe that it is a setback different from the previous ones.
Alpine denies sabotaging Alonso
When questioned about Alonso’s words that it couldn’t just be bad luck that he is the one who always has the problems, Szafnauer denies Alpine sabotage referring to the case of Takuma Sato and Jenson Button as an example.
«It was an engine problem. And we don’t always have the same people preparing Esteban’s (Ocon) engine or Fernando’s, they mix. So even though the probability that it will always be on the same side is lower, there is not a zero probability of that happening, although the chances that it will always be on one side or the other are reduced, “he said.
He added: “However, I remember when I was in SlingI don’t remember how many engine failures Sato had, like 13 in a year, and Jenson (Button) didn’t have any. Zero. And the question always arose, we couldn’t find anything to prove he was on one side or the other. At that point, the questions were always if Takuma drove so differently from Jenson, that he always passed on his side. I think it was just the luck of the draw. So I think here is the luck of the draw.”
«There is nothing we can find that explains why he is always on Fernando’s side.“, hill.
Yields vs Reliability
On the other hand, Szafnauer recalled that Renault bet more on performance than on reliabilitya decision that he supports as the correct one: «We must not forget that at the beginning of the year, we proposed, and it was before I arrived, but I think that it was the right decisionlook for performance in the engine, because the engines were going to freeze.
“So we made a conscious decision to go after performance and fix reliability issues when they arose, because the FIA allows it. It was a conscious and strategic decision. And now when we deal with them, we can fix them,” he added.
Similarly, he declared: “However, we must not forget that we purposely didn’t want to be unreliable. But if you have to fail, you have to push the performance limit, because you can’t add performance until 2026. But you can fix the reliability issues. And we can do it during the winter. So strategically, I think it was the right thing to do. And we still have two races to go to finish in fourth place. I think we can do it.”
Finally, Otmar assured that he had absolute confidence that the Renault engine department fix the problem that Fernando Alonso suffered. “Even though I spent seven and a half years in the engine department at Honda, our engine department knows more than I do, they have a much deeper understanding and they will figure it out,” he said.
He concluded by commenting: “I asked them about the cylinder failure, but as I said, strategically that’s what we set out to do. Every time we have a problem, we fix it. It doesn’t reappear. So this was a little bit different from what we went through in Singapore.”
Just two races away, Alpine has 7 points over McLaren fighting for fourth place in the constructors’ world championship.
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Font: motor sport
