A disaster. There will be no more celebrations. The finish. The two Mercedes drivers, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, took the podium alongside Max Verstappen. Fernando Alonso, seventh, fought back against Esteban Ocon, Yuki Tsunoda and Guanyu Zhou. Big disappointment. A downhill World Championship. It’s over, no, nothing like that! “It was only one race, in Canada I’ll crush them”, Alonso proclaimed in the mixed zone and cleared, with a couple of sentences, the clouds on his horizon. This Sunday, in Montmeló, he signed the worst result of his season and “nobody wants to have a bad day at home”, but that’s it, that’s all.. Neither the improvement of Mercedes nor the delay of Aston Martin are significant, as analyzed by the two-time Formula 1 champion, who promised to return to the podiums, to the path of that victory number 33 in his life.

Your analysis might seem optimistic. His analysis was really optimistic. But it is that he had reasons to be. Among his reasons to keep his spirits up, the characteristics of the Spanish layout -fast corners and high degradation-, the new parts that Aston Martin has promised for the next races and, above all, his poor classification. “I'm leaving happy because with a normal Saturday I would have had chances. In Miami, even in Monaco, I wasn't ready to get on the podium, but I qualified on the front row of the grid and got it. Here it has been the opposite. If I had started from the front I would have left, I would have worn the tires less and maybe I would have finished third or fourth, I don't know,” Alonso said.. His career, in reality, was a worthwhile comeback.

The commitment to two sets of soft tires locked him in the pack and, after his second stop in the pits, with 20 laps to go, he found himself tenth, behind drivers from Alpine, Alpha Tauri and Alfa Romeo.. He overtook them and raised the public of Montmeló. But he couldn't anymore. In sixth place, just ahead of him, he found his teammate, Lance Stroll, and he did not try to win the position. Carlos Sainz's fifth place was unattainable and the battle with his partner was risky. “It didn't matter if it was sixth and seventh or seventh and sixth.. Between the two of us we have saved the furniture and we have taken points from Ferrari in the Constructors' World Championship, “said Alonso while waiting for the next test, on June 18, in Montreal. Head held high, smile wide: the opposite of his compatriot, Carlos Sainz.

Ferrari's problem

In the mixed zone, his gestures said it all: disappointment for the lost podium. It started from the front line, Ferrari had brought multiple novelties to Montmeló and, despite this, it was surpassed by the Red Bull and the Mercedes. The eleventh position of his teammate, Charles Leclerc, outside the points, was the confirmation of the problems that the team is dragging. “The car was not for more,” said Sainz. In Formula 1 there is a widespread belief that new parts, especially when it comes to aerodynamic adjustments, require several adaptation races and that is why Ferrari will surely improve before the summer break, but something is still wrong.

Carlos Sainz, just before the race. JOSEP LAGO AFP

“At the factory they are giving everything, they are testing everything in the wind tunnel, although it is clear that we lack,” Sainz analyzed, who, like Alonso, played down the importance of the double on the podium between Hamilton and Russell. I wouldn't jump to too many conclusions. There are always better circuits than others and in this one they are fast”, he supposed with a point in his favor. Leclerc has been on the podium once this year -in Baku- and the Spaniard has not yet achieved it, but thanks to his regularity he leads him with 16 points in the World Cup. There are months left for dispatches, negotiations and contracts, but it is always important to be ahead of your partner. Everything else is uncontrollable.

Hamilton's “No”

Especially when this Sunday not even Mercedes assumed its superiority as definitive and accepted that, in the next races, who knows what will happen. For several races, practically since the season began, Hamilton has maintained certain tensions with his own team and neither his second place in Montmeló nor his approach to Alonso in the championship -he is fourth, 12 points behind the Spanish-, lowered his speech. “No”, he answered emphatically when asked if his car was already the second fastest on the grid and he could think of competing against Red Bull.

Lewis Hamilton, on the podium at Montmeló. JOSEP LAGO AFP

With Shakira, Rosalía or Neymar as guests in his motorhome, the pilot who gathered the most paparazzi around, did not want to launch the bells on the fly: “I did not expect a double podium here. Maybe at the end of the year we can get closer to Red Bull, but that is not our goal now, “concluded the British. His success this Sunday was not, what, nothing like that, a disaster for Alonso.

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