Alonso laments 'lost opportunity' after Alpine ignore pit requests

Spanish driver wanted to pit earlier in Japan but calls were ignored

Will Gray

Sunday 9 October 2022 17:20

Fernando Alonso complained Alpine made “wrong choices continuously” on strategy during the Japanese Grand Prix as the team ignored his radio calls.

The Spaniard started and finished the heavily disrupted seventh after strategic decisions saw him bounce up and down the order.

Alonso was one of the final drivers to pit to switch from wet tyres to intermediates but was among the few to stop again later for another fresh set of the green-walled compound.

"The strategy didn’t work for us today," said Alonso. "We made the wrong choices continuously.

“First, we stopped the last to put the intermediates, we lost places; then we stopped too late for the second stop, with six laps to the end, and I just finished in the same place as I was [at the start].

“I was asking to pit earlier on both occasions but today my microphone maybe didn’t work!

"We should have stopped with 10, 11, or 12 laps to go. I don’t know what they were doing. And then we stopped six laps to the end. So we lost an opportunity.”

Alonso happy to race in tough conditions

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Rain struck Suzuka shortly before the scheduled race start and worsening conditions led to concerns of a forced delay in proceedings.

After just two laps, intense levels of spray and multiple incidents saw the red flag displayed with fans left waiting over two hours before the action resumed.

Asked if it was the right decision to have pressed on with the original start, Alonso added: “Absolutely, I think we need to try. You never know until all the cars are together, so I think we tried and the grip was ok but the visibility was bad.

"The visibility was terrible from the very beginning. It’s like Spa, last year. When it was cancelled, it was because of the visibility not because of the grip, so we need to keep thinking how to improve the spray of the cars."

Last year’s Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps was stopped after just two laps due to heavy rain, but on that occasion, there was no resumption.

Asked why it was possible to race at Suzuka and not Spa, Alonso added: “It was a little bit better than Spa and the speeds are probably lower. In Spa, there are two or three places where you are more than 300kph, the spray was even worse.”