Alonso had a tough start in Miami. Hamilton made a move on him at the first corner, pushing him wide and causing him to bump into Lance Stroll. This led to a chain reaction, involving Lando Norris from McLaren.
Alonso got a puncture from the incident and fell to the back of the race. He couldn’t recover much and finished 17th.
Before this race, Alonso had faced penalties in recent races, so he didn’t want to take any risks in overtaking other cars. He didn’t want to get penalized again.
He said, “Maybe today I didn’t get penalised, but I always get penalised. Today the same thing. I was behind Ocon, I could maybe take a risk and overtake him, but logically I don’t take the risk to avoid being penalised. So, I tried to complete the race, which is 19 laps, and go back to the team to talk about the changes.”
Alonso also mentioned that for him and the team, the sprint race was like a test session. They wanted to understand how the tires would wear out for the main race.
“We didn’t have any interest in the sprint race. We were just going to check degradation and things for tomorrow and at the end we managed it. For us it’s a free practice, it’s not really a race. Now, the important part of the race starts, the qualifying and tomorrow the 57 laps. I think we can draw a conclusion from this sprint for the parc ferme that opens now and see if we can improve the car a little bit.”
