Lance Stroll expects Aston Martin to fare better in the Miami Grand Prix this weekend than it did in Azerbaijan last time out.
With Aston Martin already braced to suffer a performance drop-off due to the multitude of straights on the Baku City Circuit, the Silverstone outfit’s competitiveness was further hampered last weekend by set-up issues and a repetitive DRS problem.
Consequently, Fernando Alonso’s run of podium finishes since the start of the year came to an end while Stroll crossed the line a distant seventh, 30s behind his team-mate.
However, Stroll is confident that the characteristics of the Miami International Autodrome will be much more suited to the strengths of Aston Martin’s 2023 package.
“I think Baku was one of our more difficult tracks,” he said, “like just coming into the weekend looking at the layout of the track, you know, a lot of long straights and we haven’t been particularly competitive on the longer straights and you come here, it looks like on paper it could be a little bit better for us. But we’ll wait and see.”
Despite the excessive drag the AMR23 bears being exposed in Baku, Aston Martin progressively improved relative to the opposition as the weekend unfolded.
Alonso’s race pace was impressive enough to claw him into contention for the final spot on the podium, only narrowly missing out to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who had started five places ahead on the grid.
The former two-time Formula 1 champion remained adamant after the race it boded extremely well for the British marque to be so competitive on an unperfect weekend.
Stroll is firmly in agreement with his team-mate that Aston Martin’s strong recovery through the Azerbaijan GP weekend provided a further encouraging sign for future races.
“I mean, we got off to a bit of a difficult start [in Baku],” the Canadian highlighted. “You know, qualifying on Friday wasn’t amazing.
“But then we picked up the pace on Sunday. And, you know, we were able to challenge the Ferraris. And then I was in the mix with the Mercedes.
“But we had, you know, much better pace on Sunday than we did at the start of the weekend, which I think was great. And we managed to pick up some good points.”
Meanwhile, Alonso is predicting another tight battle to settle the places behind the dominant Red Bull side in Miami between Aston Martin, Ferrari and Mercedes.
The ex-Alpine racer anticipates the trend of Ferrari being strong on Saturdays and Aston Martin’s superior tyre management setting it up well for the race continuing.
“I think it has been quite close between all the teams,” he said.
“In Bahrain they [Ferrari] had very strong qualifying, then we had better degradation, in Jeddah also Charles was in the first row of the grid but had the penalty from Bahrain, in Australia Mercedes they were fast and also Ferrari, and then in Jeddah Charles was quite fast.
“It has been always very, very tight, within one or two tenths from each other, maybe they arrive a bit better Saturdays, we arrive a bit better Sunday, but it has been quite consistent from Bahrain to Baku.”
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