Yes, but no. A constant want and cannot. Fernando Alonso was once again left out of Q3 after another qualifying to forget in the GP of China. His AMR25 has not really gotten off the ground at the start of this season, showing potential to finish in the top ten but always in the slipstream and lagging far behind his direct competitors on the grid.
Alonso (Aston Martin) made progress today after qualifying that it will be “difficult” to get his first points of the season in the Chinese Grand Prix, which will be held this Sunday and in which he will start from thirteenth position. “It’s going to be difficult to get points, but we’ll try,” he said.
Alonso continues to do aerodynamic tests
Beyond the position, what caught the attention was that Alonso confessed that he used the sprint race and the possibility of changing the car for the qualifying to carry out in both sessions aerodynamic tests necessary for the team that they had not been able to carry out in the pre-season tests.
“We’re experimenting a bit. Things we couldn’t test in Bahrain, with that weird test because of the rain, we’re testing them now between the time trial and the race we did this morning. It’s a bit of an experimental part of the year,” said the Spaniard.
“The first changes we made were some aerodynamic tests that we couldn’t do in Bahrain and we have to do them now in the first races. It was either here or in Japan, and we did them here, as we had the opportunity to open the closed park between one qualifying session and the next, so tomorrow we will have more answers,“ he insisted.
“Another of the changes we have made has been to improve the degradation of the front tires and in the time trial you don’t see what is more effective or not, so tomorrow we will have more answers,” he told the media.
Optimism at Aston Martin
In any case, the two-time world champion showed a certain optimism after the changes made after this morning’s sprint race, in which he finished tenth: “Maybe the car wasn’t as fast as it was this morning, so hopefully this will be compensated for in tomorrow’s race with less tire degradation.” “We made some configuration changes to improve the graininess we had on the front tires this morning. In qualifying, obviously, you can’t check; we’ll see tomorrow,” he explained. ‘This morning we looked a bit more competitive and maybe it seemed possible to get a car into Q3 (the final qualifying round for the race),’ he lamented.
Race strategy
“I don’t think it will be a one-stop race. You never know, because then in the race we always drive slower, we take more care of the tires and the experience of this morning (in the sprint race) will help us to attack a little less tomorrow because the degradation is high. We will take it easy in the race, trying to understand how many stops are necessary. We will also try the hard tires for the first time. No one has tried the hard tires on this circuit this weekend and we will try to find out how they go,” he made clear. Fernando Alonso in Australia
On this, Pedro de la Rosa himself hinted on DAZN that Aston Martin’s strategy will be with two hards and a medium and maybe even ”a third stop to put a soft on at the end.”