Downfallen Fernando Alonso Repents “Missed Opportunity” at Futile Australian Grand Prix

The disappointment continued for Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard had back-to-back ‘bad’ races in his last two outings. What could’ve been a great start to 2022 has been reduced to dust for the former Ferrari man. Fernando Alonso hence regrets his missing chances.

Alonso looked great coming into Australia for the third round of the F1 championship. As the sport returned to the country after three years, it couldn’t be a venue for Fernando to remember. Despite showing strong potential in practices and then on Saturday’s qualification, Alonso fell behind. After a brilliant Q2 performance, a crash hindered his Q3 appearance that could’ve taken him further ahead in the starting grid.

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Despite starting from P10, there were chances for the Spanish international to make amends. With both Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen retired, Fernando could have gone further up to fetch “6th or 7th”. However, the tactics backfired for Alonso. Fernando chose to start with hard tires, to give him maximum time before he needed to pit. As Virtual Safety Car neutralized the advantage, Fernando could do no better than resigning from the race in P17 in the end.

When asked to comment on the Australian Grand Prix performance, the 40-year-old driver conveyed, “I have no words, honestly, it is difficult to accept that everything has gone wrong so far. But hey, there are three races and there are twenty left, luck will compensate sooner or later in these 23 races and another day we will be lucky. But yes, we lost a guaranteed 6th in Saudi Arabia, here before the safety car we were aiming for 6th or 7th before the safety car.”

“Considering what happened in qualifying, the podium was easy considering Max was out. George on the podium, I think we were much faster than Mercedes on this circuit. We missed an opportunity”, the former McLaren driver further stated.

What happened with Fernando Alonso in Saudi Arabia?

Talking about the second race in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Alonso had yet another bad outing. A brilliant Q3 performance saw him starting from P7 on the grid. As the race started, he seemed to have found his quality and started pushing further. The race saw a fabulous tussle between him and his teammate Esteban Ocon.

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Unfortunately, with 15 laps to go, Fernando’s Alpine faced a technical issue that forced him to retire. Had that not been the case, the former Ferrari driver could’ve picked some handsome points in the middle-east country. With back-to-back terrible races for Alonso, it’ll be interesting to see what he can do when F1 goes to Italy for the fourth round of the championship in two weeks’ time.