Fernando Alonso had another weekend with the AMR25 in Bahrainafter finishing the race in fifteenth position. The performance of the car was once again the cause of the bad day, and the appearance of the safety car did not help, but the result would have been similar. However, he says that in Saudi Arabia this weekend, the car will perform better.
A Bahrain GP to forget
Fernando Alonso had a Bahrain GP to forget. It all started badly from the moment he got into the car in Free Practice 2, and ended with the worst feelings of the season so far. He managed to finish in fifteenth place, ahead of Lance Stroll and with two retirements on the track that allowed him to climb a few places. However, the Spaniard regretted the poor performance of the car in all aspects.
“We need to improve. It’s been a difficult weekend, we expected to be slow with all the low-speed areas in Bahrain, but we need to improve the car, it’s not just the low speed, I think it’s a bit of everything.
“Low speed was our weakest sector in Australia, Japan and China. Bahrain is like that and it has been our least competitive weekend, so that’s where we need to focus. I think we are trying as hard as we can.
“Difficult at the start, but also halfway through the corner. It’s as if the car is dying at low speed. A known problem that we also had last year and continue to have,” he said.
Given the poor performance, Alonso and Aston Martin tried a risky strategy to scrape up some extra positions, but when things are bad, any attempt to improve ends up dragging them down, and in this case, the safety car was the final straw for a team that can’t find its way.
“We didn’t have the pace, so whichever tire we chose, it wasn’t enough. So I extended the stint with the mediums a lot, even giving up some positions to have a shorter last stint, but then the safety car came out and we all stopped on the same lap.”
“So even our little strategy risk couldn’t be carried out in the end with the safety car, but I don’t think it really changed anything,” he explained.
Alonso announces upgrade for Saudi Arabia
Formula 1 continues to be relentless and this very weekend there will be a new race, this time in Saudi Arabia, and although the car will not receive any upgrades or updates, Fernando Alonso believes that it is a circuit that is better suited to the car, but he still sees it as very difficult for the team to get into the points if nothing extraordinary happens during the race.
“I really think Jeddah will be a little better for us, but scoring points is a bit difficult at the moment. The first four teams are in another league and then there’s always Haas, Williams, AlphaTauri a bit ahead of us. You quickly become the seventh or eighth team and in those positions you can’t score points unless you are very, very lucky”.
Aston Martin’s situation is a far cry from what was expected at the start of the season, where hopes were pinned on leading the midfield and being able to fight for a place in the top five if race circumstances allowed. But the truth is that Aston Martin continues to take steps backwards, and there have been too many races so far this season to expect any kind of change if the car does not receive improvements. The improvements and updates seem to be on the way, but we still have to wait several races for them to arrive and then see if they really work or if, as has happened in recent years with the improvement packages, the car continues to get worse.