Szafnauer Thrilled with Alpine Qualifying – But “Only Half of the Job is Complete”

Team principal for BWT Alpine F1 Team, Otmar Szafnauer, is “delighted” with a fifth and seventh place start on the grid for Sunday’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, though remains realistic, claiming that the job is not completely finished.

“We’re delighted with today’s Qualifying result with brilliant laps from Esteban and Fernando to put us well inside the top ten for tomorrow’s Grand Prix. We knew from the beginning of the weekend we had the pace to be very competitive, so to see the hard work from everyone at the team pay off is excellent,” says the new Alpine team principal for the 2022 season.”

Szafnauer claims that Alpine are going to work on the strategy for Sunday’s race overnight – “Only half of the job is complete, though, and points are only given out on Sundays. We’ve put ourselves in a great position to have a strong race and we’re looking forward to developing our strategy overnight to ensure both cars are very well placed and prepared to score points.“

Finally, the team principal showed his thoughts for Mick Schumacher, who suffered a high-speed accident at turn thirteen, bringing out the red flag and delaying the final five minutes of Qualifying 2. Thankfully the Haas F1 Team driver is okay.

“We also wish Mick well after a quite frightening crash during the session. We hope Mick recovers quickly and is in a position to race again soon.”

Alpine’s performance this weekend has been strong so far, and the French outfit will be hoping to score a good amount of points in Sunday’s race.