Marcin Budkowski of Alpine has highlighted why Fernando Alonso’s rebound to show some of his greatest form after a rough period earlier this year.
Marcin Budkowski, Alpine Executive Director, has highlighted why Fernando Alonso’s form dropped early in the season and how he was able to turn things around to become one of the top drivers in recent events.
After taking a break from Formula One at the end of 2018, Alonso has made a strong start to his comeback. He was on track to score some points in the season opener in Bahrain until he was forced to retire due to a sandwich wrapper.
The next four events, on the other hand, proved to be quite difficult for the Spaniard.
“The interesting thing with Fernando’s return, much has been said about his return to form and his difficult start to the season, in Bahrain he the put the car in Q3 at the first,” Budkowski said.
“Then he had a series of slightly more difficult races or actually more difficult qualifying sessions because he was always very competitive in the race.
“He was just struggling to extract the 110 percent that you have to extract from the car on a qualifying effort. I thought about it actually because I was questioning this specific point of why he was good in Bahrain and struggled a bit more in the following races.
“I believe that we tested in Bahrain before and he had a bit more time to get accustomed to the car and the track and to push it if you want. On a normal race weekend, it’s always a bit more tricky.
“Not a single time at the beginning of the season did he say that the car was not good enough or the setup is not good enough or the team’s not working well enough. He said, ‘We’re missing two tenths, it’s on my side, I’ll find it, bare with me’.
“And he did. He just worked hard and worked with engineers. He knew that he had to squeeze this last bit of lap time from the car.”
Prior to the summer break, Alonso had scored points in the last six races. Alpine has moved up to fifth place in the Constructors’ Championship thanks to his constant points total. Alonso was poised to perform well from the start of the Monaco Grand Prix, according to Budkowski, but other factors hindered him.
“Progressively every race, he was getting a bit more comfortable and then we got into Monaco [and] Baku,” continued Budkowski. “He was a bit unfortunate because Monaco we had a bit of a nightmare weekend with the tyres.
“Baku is a circuit where you have walls everywhere and it’s not really one where you want to push to the extreme limit.
“I think after Monaco Fernando said, ‘I’m looking forward to Paul Ricard, because actually I feel good in the car now, but I want a circuit where I can actually try it out and go and find the limits’. And that’s exactly how it happened.”
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