Alpine boss Otmar Szafnauer says Fernando Alonso's electronic controls that crashed and prevented the Spaniard from starting the sprint race in Austria were not manufactured by the team
Alpine was hoping for a good weekend in Austria after Friday's qualifying session, in which Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso secured good starting positions for the sprint race - fifth and eighth respectively. However, an electrical problem in the Spaniard's car moments before the start complicated the day for the French team, which had to start from the back of the grid with car #14.
After the end of the race, in which Alonso had to recover after starting from the back of the grid to come tenth, Otmar Szafnauer - Alpine's boss - admitted that the team has frequently dealt with problems in the Spaniard's car, but sees no relation between them.
"They are new [problems], and they are not connected," Szafnauer explained when asked about the accumulation of incidents on Alonso's car in 2022. "But having said that, we have to work hard to get rid of these nuisances. The difficulty is: once you have a nuisance, you need to fix it forever - so that it never arises again," he said.
▶️ Get to know the GRAND PRIME channel on Twitch by clicking here!
"But you never know what's waiting around the next corner, because if you knew, you'd fix it before you got to the corner," he stressed. "So hopefully as we get the problems fixed, the next one will be nothing and we'll have cleaner weekends," he pointed out.
Speaking directly about what prevented Alonso from starting in the sprint race, Szafnauer explained that the component that failed in the Spaniard's car is not produced by Alpine, but purchased by the team. So the most important thing for the French team at the moment is to find out why the part gave trouble only in the two-time world champion's car.
"It can happen to anyone. I don't think it was an Alpine problem. We don't know the reason yet, but everything indicates that the electronic control unit [ECU] failed," he revealed. "It's not something we design, it's not something we make - we buy it. If it failed in an Alpine car because of the location in the engine or the installation? I doubt it. But we have to find out why it failed and the reason behind it," he closed.
The next opportunity Alpine will have to test whether it has indeed solved Alonso's problems will be at home in the French GP, scheduled to take place between July 22 and 24 at the Paul Ricard Circuit in Le Castellet.