Alonso's fed up with Alpine: promises, engines and broken dreams

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On September 13, just hours after the Monza debacle,

was quick to announce that Alpine would be fitting a new floor for the Singapore GP.

An innovation that would mean a "great advance in downforce" and that would return the A522 to where it "should be".

The sports director of Alpine considered that double zero in Italy as an "isolated event" and did not see the need for

to release "more engines", despite the water leak suffered in his propeller.

Three weeks after those predictions, the Spaniard left Marina Bay yesterday with his fourth retirement of the year and the French team behind McLaren in the Constructors' World Cup.

Alonso's tiredness was evident next to the fence of turn 10, where his car had run out of bellows on lap 21. "I didn't have any warning in the car, or anything like that, but the noise I heard was ugly and I think it was due to something in the engine", explained the Spaniard.

A bitter ending to his 350th career in the World Championship, a record ahead of

.

The worst possible farewell to one of his fetish circuits, in which he has two wins, five podiums and a constant presence in the top-7, even during the McLaren-Honda era.

The calculations of endless bloodletting were still seething in his head.

To these 10 points that escaped in Singapore, we had to add four in Bahrain, eight in Saudi Arabia, 10 in Australia, 12 in Canada, 10 in Austria and two in Italy.

A total of 56 just for reliability issues.

If the strategic errors in Imola, Melbourne and Montmeló are added to that figure, the amount would exceed 60 points.

In the absence of five races to close, Alonso accumulates 59, an almost exact record to last year at this point in the World Cup (58).

However, his four withdrawals double those of 2021 and place him in line with the six of his last year at McLaren.

"An Identical Problem"

Oblivious to these cabals, Alpine's official statement limited itself to confirming "an identical problem in the power unit" of their cars.

, the

team, announced that the matter would be analyzed "in detail".

"It is important to identify the origin and implement preventive measures to prevent it from happening again", he assessed about the double failure, which had also left

out of action on lap 28.

In the weekend that was presented as an alternative to the dominance of Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes, Alpine lost the place to McLaren, with whom it is fighting for fourth place in the World Championship.

The windfall of the second

favored

's team , who have rarely had the fourth fastest car throughout the year.

, a shadow until yesterday, was able to recover 11 positions, while

once again rounded off a very consistent Sunday to cross the checkered flag fourth.

To make matters worse, this misstep coincides with the hidden battle against the Woking team, who snatched their young promise

two months ago .

Without going any further, last week,

, CEO of Alpine, spoke some words that now seem to turn against him: "McLaren has more or less the same strength, but we are a factory team and that gives us a competitive advantage".

To know more

Alonso, after the fiasco.

"Losing 60 points is unacceptable"

• Drafting: MIGUEL A. HERGUEDAS

"Losing 60 points is unacceptable"

Rossi's position has been extremely weakened since last January, when he decided to ditch his CEO (

) and his non-executive chairman (

).

Despite closing the 2021 financial year with a profit of 33 million euros and maintaining his "long-term" goal of winning the World Cup, the truth is that the figure of the CEO is increasingly questioned in the circles of power in F1 .

One of the most obvious signs that even question its future on the grid is that Alpine fails to extract any performance from the Renault engines.

The big losers, obviously, are their pilots.

And the honorable mention goes to Alonso, with a car drowned since the end of July in Paul Ricard.

Likewise, the French brand is singled out by its own opponents.

And it is that the former supplier of Red Bull in the glory days of

has run out of customers on the grid.

And it seems definitely.

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