Fernando Alonso refuses to give up in title fight as Max Verstappen wins again in Monaco
Max Verstappen had warned the grand prix at the principality would be the toughest challenge to his hegemony this F1 season before surviving the rain to win comfortably by 28 seconds from Alonso.
It extended Verstappen’s championship lead to 39 points over teammate Sergio Perez ahead of next weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix, where Red Bull will once again be race favourites.
But Alonso, a further 12 points back in the standings, is refusing to give up on this year’s title having finished on the podium in all but one race.
The Spaniard said: “We didn’t have the best car in 2010 and we arrived leading the championship in Abu Dhabi. We didn’t have the best car in ’12 and we still fought for the championship until the last lap in Brazil.
“So, the championship is long. We will not give up. We will need weekends where Red Bull has some issues like Sergio had here with the DNF and zero points.
“And if Max has one or two of those, we will be a little bit closer in the championship. This is motorsport. Anything can happen. But on pure pace, I think we don’t have a chance yet. But we will not give up for sure.”
There was a dramatic final third to the race when rain fell heavily and suddenly causing a flurry of pitstops. Aston Martin brought Alonso into the pits for a set of medium tyres and then had to bring him in a lap later for intermediates.
It cost the two-time world champion a shot at getting a jump on race leader Verstappen but Alonso said it was the right call at the time and hinted it would not have impacted the outcome of the race.
He said: “The medium tyre was behaving surprisingly good in our opinion. We were hoping for more graining or bigger degradation, and Max was able to drive 50 laps on an amazing pace, and that was the reason why he won the race, not because of strategy. He was just faster.”
Asked what his chances were of the race win if things had stayed dry, Alonso added: “I think we didn’t have a chance. I think we were brace on the strategy.
“It’s not normal that you start on the first row of the grid and choose the hard tyre trying to do the opposite of the leaders. And that shows the commitment from the team and how aggressive everyone was at Aston Martin, trying to get the win.”
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