Fernando Alonso believes Alpine’s weekend at the Austrian Grand Prix is over following its disappointing display in qualifying.
Alonso advanced past Q1, ending the session in P3, while team-mate Esteban Ocon was knocked out in the opening segment.
In Q2, Alonso was on course to improve his best lap time at the end of the session before he was impeded at the final corner by Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel.
Vettel was penalised for the incident, with the stewards handing him a three-place grid penalty – however Alonso believes the German is free of blame.
“It [the penalty] will change something for them, but for us, it changed everything on the weekend,” Alonso said.
“I don’t think Seb could do much more, inside the car, we are relying on our engineers. I guess it was more the team than Seb himself.
“Sometimes you have to do it [back up], the car in front, they are doing it so as a consequence, behind them three or four cars have to do it.
“If we have a free track, we will try to do a clean out lap, but as I said, I don’t think Seb did anything wrong.
“There was a couple of cars in front of him already slowing down. The biggest thing is our race, what happened to them doesn’t change much.”
Without the incident, Alonso believes he was on for a top six qualifying result, but now concedes that his weekend is all but over, as he will line-up in P14.
“I think we were as fast as ever in this qualifying session, in the season. P3 in Q1, P5 in Q2 and maybe P5 or P6 in Q3 because we had two sets of tyres.
“It’s a big consequence for our weekend, this because even our qualifying tyre choices were made to maximise Saturday. Saturday has been terrible, with P14. I guess the weekend is over for now, for us, but nothing we can do.”
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