Alonso continues in the points after rain and red flag affected Monaco Grand Prix

Heavyrain in the region minutes before the race at 15:00pm meant the start was twicedelayed before laps under the Safety Car were brought to a halt by the first oftwo red flags. Once racing resumed, both drivers ran full Wet tyres on achallenging first stint with some other teams pitting early for Intermediates.Both drivers remained on Wets before double stopping for Hard tyres on lap 21,with an eye on driving to the end of the 78-lap race.

Thesecond red flag for Mick Schumacher’s heavy crash after the Swimming Poolchicane on lap 30, brought a further delay to the afternoon. Both Fernando andEsteban swapped to Mediums in the interval looking to conserve and go to theend of the race, which was now against the clock. Fernando managed his tyresand pace to cross the line a comfortable seventh place with Esteban behind inninth. However, a five-second time penalty applied after the race for anincident with Lewis Hamilton meant Esteban ended in twelfth and outside of thepoints.

EstebanOcon, started P10, finished P12:

“Today’sresult is tough to swallow, and I’m frustrated that we leave Monaco withoutscoring points. Inside the car it felt like a racing incident with Lewis[Hamilton], especially at a track like Monaco where any overtake attempt islikely to involve some contact. The team has worked so hard all weekend,especially in finding the gains between Friday and Saturday, and we now leavewithout scoring deserved double points. We’ll have to move forward and I’mlooking to put it right in Baku where we race next.”

FernandoAlonso, started P7, finished P7:

“It was a very difficult race today with the conditions, sowe can be pleased with a seventh-place finish and more points added to thechampionship. It was a tricky race to manage with difficult choices on strategyat times, but we did everything well as a team and it was all well managed. Atthe wheel, it was not easy, and I had to be careful at times not to make anymistake to make sure we brought the car home in the points. On the dry stints,because of what we learned on Friday, we had to be careful on the tyres,especially for me after the second-red flag. We held on to seventh comfortably,so I’m pretty pleased with today’s job.”

Laurent Rossi, CEO Alpine: “Today’s Monaco GrandPrix was very eventful and it’s always good when you come out of those raceswith strong points in the bag. As a team, we were expecting it to be achallenging weekend at a circuit with so many slow-speed corners, which doesnot tend to suit our car. We’ve had to dig deep all weekend to makeimprovements between Friday and Saturday, which not only helped us thisweekend, but also bodes well for the future where we can take forward thisknowledge in adapting our car to all types of tracks. Both drivers drove goodraces today to cross the line in seventh and ninth, respectively, which isprobably where we deserved to be in today’s race. Esteban’s time penalty is atough one as it was probably 50-50, so we won’t dwell too much on it and we’llkeep our heads down and look ahead to the next one. I’d like to thank everyoneat the team for their hard work after a very busy two weeks across Spain andMonaco. We’ll take some rest this week before refocusing ourselves forAzerbaijan and Canada next time out where we’re hungry to add two lots ofdouble points.”