Fernando Alonso finished the race disappointed by the team’s poor strategy and bad decisions in the pits. He believes they missed a great opportunity to achieve something more important and lamented that from his side of the garage it seems like good decisions are never made, given that Stroll managed to finish third with the decisions made on his side.
Fernando Alonso regrets the missed opportunity
In F1, there are few opportunities for teams in the middle of the pack, and Fernando Alonso knows that Aston Martin missed one yesterday to get on the podium, as demonstrated by Hulkenberg, who started in the penultimate position and finished third, scoring his first podium finish of his career. The Oviedo native did not hesitate to point the finger at the team for the strategy with his car, lamenting that they always get it wrong with him and that, with Stroll, they always get it right. The Canadian, who also started from the back of the grid, moved up to third at the first corner thanks to the good work of the team with him from the pits.
“For us, it was a missed opportunity. I’m not happy, of course, because we started seventh and finished ninth, so we got it wrong. I lost 25 seconds in three laps with the dry tire stop, which was earlier than it should have been, but in the end, it’s the team that calls you into the pits. They have more data than you do, the lap times you’re doing, the temperatures.” “So they know when it’s time to stop and they decided that was the moment, but the truth is that it was a bad decision. Then at the first stop we also stopped late, although that’s a little more understandable, and that means you can end up on the podium like Nico Hülkenberg or finish ninth like us.”
“So, from that point of view, it was a disappointing race. Also, in these situations, it seems that Lance Stroll’s group of engineers is better, but I don’t know how we don’t get that information from this side of the garage, so today the strategy cost me some points.”
Andy Cowell responds to Fernando Alonso
The CEO of Aston Martin, Andy Cowell, echoed these statements and acknowledged that the team did not get it right with the Spaniard, with whom they could have scraped something more than a ninth place that tasted like very little, although on the other hand, he celebrated that both cars finished in the points.
“It went pretty well for us to see where we were starting from, with a car at the back of the grid. It’s an exciting result for us to score points with both cars and fight for moments up there in the race. I think they did a great job.”
Andy Cowell acknowledged that they were going to act differently with Alonso, similar to what Stroll did, but in the end they held him back.
At the second stop, “we were going to bring Fernando in at the same time as Lance and we thought, ‘Fernando first?’. I think we did it too early.” “If Fernando had stayed out for a couple of laps, we would have been higher up, but it’s easy to say that in hindsight.”
Are the improvements working?
The setup of the AMR25 in the rain was not right. However, when it finally dried out, Fernando Alonso flew on the medium tires. Despite this, Andy Cowell is not committing himself on the improvements the team introduced at this Grand Prix.
“In a race like this, where you try all the tire compounds and make as many stops as we did, and with all the changing conditions, we’re going to need magic to figure out what worked and what didn’t.”