ALONSO SHOWS HE’S LOST NONE OF HIS FIGHT

FERNANDO ALONSO HAS BEEN AWAY from Formula 1 for two full seasons, so a bit of ring rust would be perfectly understandable at this stage. When he began regularly locking brakes and running off track while battling for the lower points paying positions with the likes of Lance Stroll, Sebastian Vettel, Carlos Sainz and Kimi Räikkönen, it looked as though that’s exactly what Alonso was struggling with.

As it turned out, Alonso was battling reduced performance resulting from a battery problem in his second stint, before an errant piece of sandwich wrapping paper lodged in a brake duct and overheated the car’s system. “This caused some damage, so we retired him for safety reasons,” explained Alpine executive director Marcin Budkowski. “It was a very unlucky first race for Fernando considering how strong he looked.”

Alonso looked feisty on his return to action, qualifying ninth in a car that looked only a marginal contender for Q3. His first stint was combative, but the fact he was the first runner on a normal strategy to pit suggests the A521 also lacks finesse on this latest generation of Pirelli tyres. Nevertheless, Alonso was clearly ahead of young team-mate Esteban Ocon. Truthfully, it looked as though the old master had never been away…

“I will probably disagree with that – I was not at my 100% I’m sure of that,” said Alonso, who described his return to Formula 1 racing as “very emotional”. “I had a couple of good battles, but I need to find more pace from myself and find more confidence – and I need to extract more from the car, the brakes, and execute the start better.

“It was not too bad but there is a lot of room to improve from my side. At the pitstops I think the guys did an amazing job, but my position in the second stop was not right. These are small things and mistakes I keep doing from testing and this first race – but hopefully by race two and three I can perform better personally.”