Fernando Alonso was once again unable to execute his Plan. His goal was to get back into Q3 at Montmeló, among the top 10 on the grid at the Spanish GP, and be able to recapture points, which had eluded him since the first race. "We move between 5th and 8th place," he said confidently on Thursday. But in qualifying he screwed up, found traffic and was relegated to 17th, his worst starting position at Barcelona in 21 years.
Alonso's disappointment came at the end of the first qualifying heat. He had completed four laps, with a discreet 1m21s043, too late when the clock was dangerously close to zero. He would have to risk it on the last try, but he ran out of time. It was the first time in the six GPs this year that the Spaniard from Alpine did not make it past Q1.
The Asturian had to abort his last lap and was stuck in 17th place, 567 thousandths of the cutoff time, from Guanyu Zhou. It is Alonso's worst starting position in the Spanish GP since his World Championship debut with Minardi in 2001 (he was 18th); that is to say, the second worst grid position in 19 participations in Barcelona.
Arguing his stumble, Alonso referred to two reasons: the traffic on the track that slowed him down and a "misunderstanding" with his engineer to know how much time he had left.
“There was traffic from everyone in the pit-lane and then at the start of the lap we were all a bit at the time limit for the session to end; I didn't have much information from the track engineer either, there was a bit of a misunderstanding about the time left, I thought I was one second away from the finish line and there were like 20 seconds and I started right behind Lando (Norris) trying to get into the lap . It was a misunderstanding”, explained the Spaniard.
Also in the previous Miami GP, Fernando Alonso attributed the blame for his result in qualifying (11th) to the alleged stopper made by Carlos Sainz. The Asturian considered that the man from Madrid had made him lose 4 tenths, so he could not access the final Q3 among the 10 fastest.
Before the media in Montmeló, Alonso admitted, yes, that “since the third free practice we were not very fast. We have a different part of the car, which this weekend was my compi's turn. I think it was noticed today that I lacked a bit of rhythm", he acknowledged.
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