Fernando Alonso was left pondering if his radio had failed after Alpine ignored his multiple calls to pit earlier in the Japanese Grand Prix.
Ahead of leaving the F1 team after the final four races of the season, the Spanish veteran did not hold back in his remarks over their strategy at Suzuka on Sunday.
The rain-hit race saw Alonso, who started seventh on the grid, stay out on full wet tyres longer than almost every other driver after its long-awaited restart, and he later turned to a second set of fresh Intermediates. A charge up the midfield saw him return to seventh, where he finished one hundredth of a second behind Sebastian Vettel.
“The strategy didn't work for us," Alonso told reporters.
“We made the wrong choices continuously. First, we stopped the last to put the intermediates, we lost places.
“Then we stopped too late for the second stop with six laps to the end, and I just finished in the same place that I was. I was asking to pit earlier on both occasions, but today my microphone maybe didn't work.
“We should have stopped 10, or 11 or 12 laps to go. As I said, I don't know what they were doing, and then we stopped six laps till the end. We lost an opportunity.”
