“The important thing is not age, but the timer,” said the two-time Spanish champion. Photo: Getty.
The Spanish Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin), a great entertainer at the start of the Formula 1 season, will try to continue disturbing the Red Bull of the Dutchman Max Verstappen and the Mexican Sergio Pérez in Baku; venue this weekend of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the fourth of the World Championship and the first of the six that this year will have the new sprint format.
Unlike the last two years -the ones that the sprint has been contesting: then only three per season-, lThe positions of the reduced test will not define the grid of the race on Sunday.
This Friday the first and only free training will be held, hours before the qualification that will order the Sunday departure training; while Saturday will be independent: the morning will be devoted to qualifying that will decide how the afternoon sprint will start, which maintains the distribution of points -for the best eight- from last season; but will not decide the grill on Sunday.
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The winner of the reduced race, as during last year -in 2021 only three scored– eight points will be scored, the second will add seven; and the third, six: so on until the eighth, which will add one unit to your general account.
Friday’s qualifying will be the usual -with three elimination rounds of 18, fifteen and twelve minutes-but the ‘quali’ that will define the grill on Saturday will be reduced: the first round (Q1) will last twelve minutes; the second, ten; and the third, eight. And it will roll out of shape mandatory with medium compound tires in Q1 and Q2; and with soft tires in Q3.
ALONSO, A GREAT ENTERTAINER WITH THREE OF THREE AND 101 PODIUMS IN F1
Alonso, 41, confirming what he said in an interview the season of his return to F1 -after two out of it in which he won, among others, the World Endurance Championship (WEC)-, which “The important thing is not the age, but the stopwatch”, has become the great sensation at the start of the course. And among his many followers, inside and outside of Spain, he has made 33 fashionable: the number that he would reach with a new victory; ten years after the thirty-second, that of 2013 at the Spanish Grand Prix.
After impressing in the pre-season tests in Bahrain, the double world champion from Asturias (2005 and 2006) has been on the podium three times in his first three races with Aston Martin, his new team. And he occupies third place in the championship, 24 points out of the 69 with which Verstappen commands -a candidate for a third title in a row-, which leads ‘Czech’ by fifteen.
F1 resumes after almost four weeks without activity, after the Australian Grand Prix; which he won, with a crazy outcome and two re-starts, ahead of the seven-time English world champion Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) and Alonso -who completed a luxury podium, his 101st drawer-, Verstappen.
After raising his record of victories in F1 to 36, ‘Mad Max’ -25 years old- leads with a 31-point advantage over Hamilton -thirteen years older than him and the one he dethroned two years ago-, fourth in a contest in which the Spanish Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) occupies fifth place, with 20 points: the same as the other Mercedes driver, the Englishman George Russell.
