Fernando Alonso rues ‘a bit of a misunderstanding’ that led to his Q1 exit during 2022 F1 Spanish GP qualifying

Fernando Alonso had a shocker of a qualifying session for the 2022 F1 Spanish GP. The two-time world champion was eliminated in Q1 and will be starting the race in P17.

This comes after the Spaniard showed impressive speed throughout the weekend. One of the reasons behind the exit was Alonso missing out on a proper second run in Q1 with which he could have escaped elimination.

Speaking of the disappointing run, Fernando Alonso put that down to a misunderstanding within the team, saying:

“It was a difficult qualifying session for me today and we had a bit of a misunderstanding on my final lap of Q1. I thought we had a one or two second margin to get across the line, but we actually had a twenty second margin in the end. It’s a high price to pay here because as we know it’s very difficult to overtake on this track.”

The two-time world champion however appeared positive about the race, saying:

“Let’s see tomorrow because in the last few races people who have started towards the back of the grid have had a well-timed Safety Car and then are inside the top ten. We need to hope for one of those tomorrow and maybe we get some luck and take some points. Today the car was not as fast as yesterday and we need to understand why that was the case.”

---

Fernando Alonso's teammate faces the same predicament

Fernando Alonso's teammate Esteban Ocon got eliminated in Q2 and will start the race in P12. The Frenchman faced similar issues with the car as he suffered from overheating of his tires.

Speaking in the media pen post-qualifying, Ocon said:

“It’s not been an ideal day for us today and definitely frustrating as we know there was more performance to unlock from the car. Our tyres were overheating a little bit throughout qualifying as we maintained the minimum out-lap speed, but it was going to be a tough challenge to reach Q3.”

Like his teammate Alonso, Ocon too appeared hopeful of improving during the race, saying:

“A range of strategies are possible for us tomorrow so that makes things interesting for the race. We can pretty much play with all tyre combinations and we know strategy will be very important for our day to go well. I’ll start the race in a better position than I did in Miami so we’re going to go out there and see what we can do to come out with points.”

The Alpine drivers are looking for a resurgence in the Spanish GP and it will be interesting to see what strategies will be employed by the team.