What started out as harmonious got really heated towards the end 😬 F1
Fernando Alonso won the qualifying battle at Alpine, he finished ahead of Esteban Ocon on more Sundays and he strung together a 10-race streak inside the top 10. And yet he didn’t win the intra-team battle, undone by also topping the team’s retirement count.
After a rather harmonious relationship between the team-mates in 2021, Hungary their only stand-out battle, Ocon’s pass on the Spaniard in the opening round in Bahrain was a clear indication to Otmar Szafnauer that this season the gloves were off. And rightly so given it was the start of an all-new era of cars and no-one knew what might happen.
But their biggest clash of the season was an actual clash, the two fighting for position at the sprint race in Sao Paulo. With Ocon having forced Alonso wide coming out of Juncao, the Spaniard fought back and hit his team-mate as they approached the pit straight. Neither driver scored that day and Alpine threatened to bench them if didn’t play the team game in future races.
Alpine, though, accepted that and all the talk was about ending their relationship on a friendly happy note. How quickly it turned sour. Although Alonso scored more points than Ocon in the final nine races, those came from five top-10 results with the driver retiring from four races.
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