Alonso and Sainz choke on the first corner in Las Vegas: “I thought the race was over”

Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz they have not exactly experienced their best Grand Prix of Formula 1 of the season this Sunday in Las Vegas. The American circuit, which has just debuted in the World Championship, still needs to improve, and has left a rather eventful weekend in many cases. The Spanish drivers started ninth and twelfth, respectively: If his chances of victory seemed remote, they completely dissipated shortly after the test began..

The first corner of the circuit has caused an unprecedented situation: seeing both Alonso and Sainz going wide and, therefore, causing a spin. The Aston Martin car was completely spun and collided with the Alfa Romeo of Valtteri Bottas. As for the Ferrari, he did not stop the car, and the car he could not avoid was Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes. As soon as we start, both the Asturian and the Madrid were relegated, irremediably, to the back of the grid.

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The last and penultimate positions went to them once they repaired their damage in boxes. And yet, the two recovered from the disappointment in formidable fashion and finished in the points. Alonso was able to reach ninth place, while Sainz went even further and finished sixth (benefited by a sanction to George Russell). In fact, magic He followed in the wake of the Ferrari at all times, so in some way they teamed up to move up the table, since they did almost the entire race together.

Right now, Alonso and Sainz They share points in the absence of the last event of the season, in Abu Dhabi: 200 points. The event that will end the course will serve to know which of them finishes on top. At the moment, the two-time world champion is fourth and the two-time winner of the Great Circus is fifth.

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“I started well, but in the first corner I spun or touched someone, I lost the car. And when I saw the Alfa Romeo in front of me, I thought the race was over. But with the safety car I was able to rejoin and I am left with a good taste in my mouth to score a point,” Alonso said on DAZN when everything was over, with Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc and Checo Pérez taking the podium.

The final balance was positive for Aston Martin. “We have done more than we thought. Lance (Stroll) starting nineteenth and finishing fifth is top. We lost an opportunity with me, but we were tenth in qualifying and ninth in the race,” added the number 14 of the championship. “Today was fun because of some overtaking, with Carlos, Hamilton… We were more or less in the battle,” he said.

Sainz was not dissatisfied either. “The start was complicated. But from there we made a good comeback, limiting damage. Almost from penultimate to sixth, it hasn't gone bad. The first lap was a bit of a lottery with the cold wheels, with the oil patches on the inside of turn 1... All of us who started on the inside picked it up and blocked the wheels. It is something to look at, because having to go through oil before the race must be improved for the future,” he also explained on television.

“It has been a very tough race”, Sainz came to acknowledge, calling the Las Vegas layout “more about racing than classification.” It will be necessary to see if things improve within a year after the problems detected in the return of Sin City to the calendar.