Alonso rues giving ‘points to other teams’ in Saudi

Fernando Alonso was left to rue his Saudi Arabian Grand Prix retirement, the Spaniard saying Alpine “gave points to other teams”.

Having spent the bulk of Sunday’s 50-lap grand prix ahead of his team-mate Esteban Ocon, the Frenchman P6 on the night, Alonso was on course for a solid points finish at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit.

But it all came to zero on lap 36 when he reported lost pace and reported “no power”.

The double World Champion tried to limp back to the pits, but fell metres short as even that was a trip too far for his ailing Alpine A522.

“I don’t know exactly what happened, we are still investigating,” he told the official F1 website.

“We lost power and eventually the car stopped so let’s see what we can find.

“The race was good until that point, we were fast, we felt competitive and unfortunately we lost a lot of points.”

LAP 36/50

Agony for Alonso!

"No power" he reports over the radio. He's limping back to the pits and out of the race#SaudiArabianGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/4nZ0Azoa2g

— Formula 1 (@F1) March 27, 2022

The race had been a great one in fact for the Spaniard who was on top in his intra-team battle against Esteban Ocon.

Racing for position wheel-to-wheel, Alpine’s sponsors were given plenty of publicity as Alonso and Ocon refused to give an inch.

Initially team boss Otmar Szafnauer gave them free reign to race before, some six laps after their battle began, telling them to “hold position” with Alonso ahead of his team-mate.

“Yeah it was good, obviously very intense,” said Alonso.

“My car for whatever reason today felt faster than Esteban’s car so I had a little bit more pace, tried to overtake and pull away which is what I did and concentrated on Bottas because he was very fast as well.

“So yeah we