Alonso: Not sure we'd fight for pole...but for sure, top three

Before qualifying, they showed a clip on F1TV in which Alonso was asked how, at 40 years of age, he feels when he slips into the cockpit, he replied: "15!"

And indeed he is driving like a young karter, all or nothing seems to be his approach with Melbourne qualifying a case in point, targeting a top-three Alonso was mega until he appeared to clip the grass on his flyer, after a failure of sorts, that sent him wide and out of control, crunching into the crypto.com hoarding.

The Spaniard was quick to report the fault as his crunched car settled in a cloud of dust and smoke, confirming it later in the team report: "I think it's something hydraulic because I couldn't change gear and the steering became very, very heavy, so I guess we lost the power steering.

"I don't know if we could fight for pole...but for sure, top three. I think that lap was good enough for top three and we had two sets of new tyres. It's all frustrating. I was probably doing my best weekend in years and fighting for pole position, but whatever it is we'll take it

“It seems we are very unlucky in these three races so far and to have this issue today in qualifying is a real shame. We had the pace for the top three or maybe even the front row today and on my Q3 lap I felt very fast.

"I’m not surprised to be this close to the leaders because we’ve been working hard as a team. Each weekend we have got better and better, so that is a positive. It’s been the best weekend for years for me personally, and it’s frustrating we weren’t able to deliver it today.

"Let’s see how the car is overnight and do our investigations. Hopefully we can aim to score some points tomorrow," concluded Alonso.

In the sister car Esteban kept it clean and less explosive than his teammate, bagging the eighth-best time; the Frenchman summed up: “Having both cars into Q3 is a decent result but it’s a shame that Fernando could not complete his lap as he was on for a mega one. I know the team is looking into exactly what happened but he has shown great pace all weekend.

"On my side it hasn’t been the smoothest of days, but I need to be happy in the end with eighth. We’re in the fight for tomorrow, and that’s what matters. There’s definitely plenty of work to do and I know there is pace to find so we’ll be leaving no stone unturned to try and put everything together to maximise our race," said Ocon.

Alpine team principal, Otmar Szafnauer added: “Qualifying outcome is a missed opportunity for us as the potential was there for a very strong team result. It’s positive that we have both cars into Q3 for the second race in a row.

"That said, the potential was truly there to have both our cars in the top five today such was the strength of our package around this track. As it turns out, we’re starting in eighth and tenth, and we know we can still have a strong race from there.

"Our race pace looked positive on Friday, so we’ll certainly aim to convert this starting position into strong points. Fernando was certainly fast. We will investigate the issue that caused his incident. It’s just unfortunate as we were good enough to start much higher on the grid," was Szafnauer's final word, suggesting "hydraulics" was not the official reason at time of writing.

Whatever the case, Alonso II does what Alonso II does, namely, fight hard for every bit of tarmac in a Rocky-esque kind of way. A top ten start is not so bad provided they can duplicate the Alpine he drove today to a tee, he could well muscle his way towards the podium.