Fernando Alonso heads into this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix on the back of a fantastic start to the 2023 season. The Spaniard has bagged three consecutive P3 finishes and sits 3rd in the Drivers’ Championship behind the two Red Bulls.
A maximum total of 34 points is on the line in Baku with the first sprint of the current year taking place.
For the first time in 10 years in F1, the two-time World Champion has a truly competitive car. Instead of seeing potential extra chances to win on a sprint weekend, he’s more concerned at not making any unforced errors.
“Let’s see [what happens], I think more than an opportunity, which I know there is always the talk of chaotic races or difficult weekends, maybe an opportunity comes,” he said.
“At the moment, when you have a competitive car, the opportunity is only to make a mistake, to be honest. And to really make your weekend bad if you have something going really wrong in Q1 and things like that.”
“So I don’t see much of an opportunity of taking advantage of it or capitalizing on something unless Red Bull does a mistake.
“So it’s a weekend of avoiding mistakes, not a weekend of making something special, let’s say. So that’s something that we need to approach in a very cautious manner.”
Although he declares this format of two qualifying sessions and two races more stressful, Alonso is happy to see less practice running. Away from the sport in 2019 and 2020, the Spaniard did not watch free practice sessions as he found them uninteresting and dull.
“I think it is more challenging, more stress,” said Alonso. “But I see the point of doing it. When I was out of the sport in those two years and I was at home, I was not watching the practice.
“I have to be honest, they were just too long and boring and I knew what the people were doing, which you never know at home how many kilos of fuel they have, what engine map, all these things. It was not interesting. So I see the point of making something that was different on the weekend.
“So we have to embrace that, we have to help F1 and hopefully the fans will give us a good feedback.
“But it’s more stressful, especially Saturday. I think Friday we are used to this new sprint format also last year that we only have one practice. So this is challenging for the teams.
“In one practice you need to set up the car for the whole weekend and then you go into quali.”
Alonso made his F1 debut at the Australian Grand Prix in 2001, a full 22 years ago. But even this new format is unique to him as there will be no practice on Saturday morning before sprint qualifying.
In 2003 and 2004, each driver completed one-lap on a Friday and then Saturday to determine the grid for a Grand Prix. Even then, however, a practice session would take place on Saturday before final qualifying to decide the grid.
“But the really different thing now is Saturday, where we have breakfast, we go in the car, we tie the belts and we are in Q1,” Alonso stated.
“This is completely new because even in the past that I was doing one qualifying on Friday, one on Saturday, back in the 2000s, we had always practice before qualifying. So it was FP1 or FP3 or whatever. Now we don’t have any practice and we are going to Qualifying 1.
“So yeah, it’s stressful for sure and more difficult for the drivers.”
Photo credit: Aston Martin Cognizant F1 Team
