It was a disappointing Italian Grand Prix for Alpine, after Fernando Alonso retired from the race and Esteban Ocon finished P11.
The Spaniard failed to make the most of his sixth-place start, which he was awarded after a number of drivers were awarded grid penalties for exceeding their legal number of components, most notably power unit components.
The double World Champion was unhappy with his Renault power unit virtually all race, with the Spanish driver having responded to his team telling him his engine was fine by simply saying “wow”.
The Alpine driver eventually retired on Lap 32, just over half race distance.
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The French side revealed that Alonso suffered a “suspected water pressure issue”, which caused his retirement.
“Fernando retired with a suspected water pressure issue,” Alpine stated.
“The team will investigate the cause further after the race.”
Following the race, Alonso discussed in the media pen that even without the issue, the A522 simply wasn’t “fast enough”.
Alonso believes the bottom-end of the points would’ve been the absolute “maximum” the team could’ve managed, but that now their focus turns to Singapore, where they hope the power unit will be okay.
“I don’t know, there is something for sure on the engine wrong,” said an adamant Alonso.
“We lacked deployment at the beginning and we were cutting the energy very short on the straight, so it was difficult to keep some battles alive.
“But then something bigger happened because we had to stop the car. So let’s see if the engine is alive for the future races.
“I think we were just on the edge of the points, P10, P9 maximum. So we were expecting more from this weekend, we were not fast enough. Let’s see if in Singapore we go back to our best level.”
Ocon came close to a points finish, but was unable to challenge in the final few laps due to the race finishing behind a Safety Car.
A Safety Car was needed to recover Daniel Ricciardo’s stricken MCL36, which the Australian left stuck in gear.
The Frenchman was disappointed to have come so close to the points but believes had it not been for a grid penalty which dropped him to P14, then a top 10 was on the cards.
“We came short, one position from the points, which is a bit disappointing of course,” he said.
“There has been a bit of tricky points in the race when we got stuck behind the Astons. Once we cleared them, there was a gap of like seven seconds we have to catch and we’ve done so. So the performance was very good, was faster than the cars in front.
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“But we didn’t have enough laps and the Safety Car came once it was going to start to be fun. So we came short.
“Without the penalty this weekend we would have been in the points with both cars and it’s a bit of a tough one to swallow, but we will come back stronger in the next one.
“We were not as much at ease in comparison to Spa but again, it was going to be a strong weekend if we started further up the road, so I’m not too concerned.”