Track walks were a rare occurrence for Fernando Alonso in the past, but this season, the Thursday stroll has led to some fairly good karma on race day for the Spaniard.
Alonso indulged in his first track walk at Portimao, simply because he was unfamiliar with the Portuguese circuit, and he subsequently finished the race P8.
He didn't bother to take a trek around the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, a layout he could well drive with his eyes wide shut. Neither did he trudge around Monaco, for the same reason. However, he finished out of the points at both venues.
But a run among the top-ten in Baku, where he had walked the track, convinced him that there was perhaps a lucky pattern to be recognized, an impression confirmed at Paul Ricard and at the Red Bull Ring where he finished P8 and P9 respectively.
"I did one in Portimao this year because it was a new circuit and it was the best weekend, we scored good points and we felt competitive there," he explained ahead of this weekend's second round of racing in Austria.
"We stopped doing it in Barcelona and in Monaco and we came back to not scoring points so we said: ‘OK we’ll try it again in Baku’.
"We finished sixth so it was our best race, and from that moment we keep doing track walks and it keeps scoring [us] points on Sundays. At the moment it’s a pure superstitious thing."
Four-leaf clovers, horseshoes, ladybugs and lucky track walks aside, the superstitious Alonso knows that what he needs, first and foremost, is for Alpine to raise its game
"I think it was a tough weekend in terms of competitiveness," said Alonso, recalling last weekend's Styrian Grand Prix.
"We have to raise our level hopefully this weekend. We have different tyres, we have threat of the weather on Sunday, so hopefully that will help us a little bit because I don’t think this is the best layout for our package, but some points will be available, for sure, and we have to take any opportunity."
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