Fernando Alonso makes “creative” vow after Esteban Ocon incident

São Paulo Grand Prix

Alonso makes “creative” vow after Ocon incident

The Alpine duo endured a miserable sprint

Ian Parkes & Ewan Gale

Sunday 13 November 2022 18:11

Fernando Alonso has insisted "big points" are on the table for the São Paulo Grand Prix through a "creative" strategy despite a disastrous sprint at Interlagos.

The Spaniard twice made contact with Alpine team-mate Esteban Ocon, with both plummeting out of the top 10 and allowing Lando Norris to pull McLaren two points closer in the fight for fourth in F1's constructors' standings.

The tumultuous ending to the duo's partnership at the Enstone and Viry-based outfit was hit further by a fire in the Frenchman's car in parc fermé, whilst Alonso's positional loss came through a pit stop for a new front wing following the second touch.

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“It’s far from ideal when in a sprint race you touch on the first lap because the race is too short to really overcome the deficit of the pit stop," said Alonso.

“Even though the car was great with the pace, the race was too short to recover.

“Thinking on the positives, we have a good chance to score big points because the car was surprisingly fast.”

On what is needed to secure a positive result, Alonso replied: “Doing a good start and hopefully a good strategy.

"We saw that the pace of the car is okay to be P6, P7. We just need to be creative with the strategy and have a bit of free air as I had in the sprint, unfortunately, and use the pace.”

Alonso - "Not everything is lost"

The second collision came on the long stretch towards the first corner, with Alonso clipping the right-rear wheel of Ocon's A522 to shred his front wing.

Two-time champion Alonso was handed a five-second time penalty for the incident, which mirrored the collision he had with future team-mate Lance Stroll at the United States Grand Prix.

Speaking before the penalty was handed out, Alonso said: "I didn’t see the TV properly so I don’t know how he went, but I said I was sad that we didn’t score points because at least my car was very fast.

“On his side, it was a little bit slower all weekend but on my side, we lost an opportunity.

"But not everything is lost because in the grand prix, with a long race, hopefully, we can recover."