The Alpine F1 Team are heading into this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix full of positivity after an excellent step forward last weekend in Portugal.
For the first time this season Alpine looked very fast last time out in Portugal, Fernando Alonso will be hoping the team can continue with the progress made as he enters his first home grand prix since 2018, at a track all the drivers know extremely well, the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
“I am excited to be back racing in Spain. It’s always special racing in your home country and I have good memories here in Barcelona. It’s a circuit all of us drivers know well, as we normally do our pre-season test here as well as racing the Grand Prix during the season.” Said two-time World Champion Alonso.
“It’s a challenging circuit with a lot of high speed corners. The race is also back to back with Portugal, so it’s nice to keep the momentum going. It’s traditionally quite a difficult circuit to overtake on, so qualifying will be very important. We’ll see where we are during the weekend and target a positive weekend with some more points on the board.”
“It was great to fight with Ferrari and McLaren” – Ocon
It wasn’t just Alonso who made progress in Portugal, Esteban Ocon too made huge strides in Portugal as he enjoyed battles with both Ferrari and Mclaren.
Like the rest of the grid Ocon has great knowledge and plenty of experience at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, where he hopes last weekend’s fight with Ferrari and Mclaren wasn’t just a one off, saying: “Barcelona is a challenging circuit but one we know very well. It’s been the location for testing for many years, especially during my Formula 1 career, so it’s a place where I’ve completed many laps. Sector 1 and Sector 2 are fast and challenging with the tyres getting very hot in the long corners at Turns 3 and 9.
“The final sector is tricky as it’s slow-speed and by that point on the lap you tend to lose a bit of grip. It was great to fight with Ferrari and McLaren [in Portugal], but we must aim to do that consistently and, of course, beat them. Let’s see what we can do this weekend. It will be interesting to see how the car performs at this circuit.”
