Alpine’s Marcin Budkowski: “We missed an opportunity to finish on the podium”

Marcin Budkowski felt it was a ‘bittersweet’ Sunday for the Alpine F1 Team in the Russian Grand Prix after Fernando Alonso took a top six finish but was denied a potential podium by a late-race rain shower.

Alonso was battling Red Bull Racing’s Sergio Pérez for the final step of the podium, but a decision to pit three laps from the end for the intermediate tyre saw him fall away from the fight for the top three as the likes of Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz Jr., Daniel Ricciardo and Valtteri Bottas all stopped the lap before and gained a significant amount of time in the process.

Both Alonso and team-mate Esteban Ocon lost positions as a result of their delayed pit stops (both drivers stopped on lap fifty of fifty-three), but with neither Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda nor the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team scoring points, Budkowski said it was still a relatively good day for the Enstone-based outfit despite the missed podium opportunity.

“A bittersweet feeling today; we took home eight points, but we missed an opportunity to finish on the podium,” said Budkowski, the Executive Director at Alpine.  “We decided to start the cars on different strategies, with Fernando starting on Hard tyres with the objective of stopping later in the race and potentially benefit from safety cars or any rain coming.

“Both drivers had a good first stint, with Esteban stopping earlier on the Mediums. Unfortunately, he ran out of grip in the later stages of the race on the Hard tyres. Fernando managed his tyres well and had very good pace right until the rain started to fall.

“At this stage, the challenge was to predict whether it would get heavier or go away, which is a bit of a lottery. Fernando was making positions on the dry tyres in the light rain and we decided to leave him out; had the rain intensity reduced we would have likely finished P2, but unfortunately it went the other way and we pitted him a lap too late.

“It was a similar story with Esteban: as he was outside of the points, we had to take a gamble: pit early for Intermediates or leave him out on the dry tyres, we opted for the latter and did not luck in.

“We’re leaving Sochi with eight points while our closest rivals didn’t score any, so overall a good result for the championship even if we feel we missed out on a better result today.”