Fernando Alonso says Aston Martin must understand the reasons behind the team enduring such a difficult race at the Spanish Grand Prix.
Despite only managing ninth place on the grid at his home event after damaging his floor in Q1 with an excursion into the gravel and committing an error on his sole run in Q3, the Spaniard professed that a front-row slot had been attainable in qualifying.
While Aston Martin’s race pace has typically enabled it to fight back against its rivals on a Sunday, on this occasion, the Silverstone-based squad struggled for speed in race trim compared to Mercedes and Ferrari.
Although he was able to complete a series of overtakes in the closing stages, including avoiding a feisty defence from ex-team-mate Esteban Ocon on the start-finish straight, Alonso could only trail home seventh – his worst result of the season so far.
“We didn’t have as much pace today on both the soft and hard compounds, so it was a tricky race for us,” Alonso stated. “We tried to go longer on our strategy and hoped it would pay off later with fresher tyres, but our rivals had a little more pace.
“I think sixth and seventh positions were the maximum for us. I thought our performance seemed better in qualifying, so I think we need to look at why and aim to bounce back for Canada.
“We still scored some solid points and we had no risk at the end of the race.”
Meanwhile, Lance Stroll out-qualified Alonso for the first time since the latter arrived at Aston Martin and was running as high as third at the end of Lap 1 after a well-executed dive past Lewis Hamilton into Turn 5.
However, the Canadian recalls how only five laps into the stint he began to encounter troubles with his tyres, resulting in him being eventually shifted back to the sixth position he started in by the chequered flag.
Like Alonso, Stroll asserts that Aston Martin will need to ensure it identifies the reasons for the issues that hampered the side’s competitiveness in Barcelona to avoid a repeat in the coming rounds.
“It was a fun battle with Lewis [Hamilton] on the first lap; I’ve pulled that move off before so I knew there was a gap and figured Lewis would leave me a bit of space, which he did,” he explained. “That put me in a good position going into Turn Five and I could hold the place.
“Then, from about five laps in, we really struggled with the pace. My tyre degradation was higher than expected but the cars around us didn’t seem to have the same issue, so it’s something we’ll look to understand for the coming races.
He added: “We bring home some good points finishing sixth and seventh, but I think we’d been hoping for slightly more today.”
Getting two cars to the finish inside the points was not enough for Aston Martin to retain second place in the Constructors’ Championship, though, after Mercedes delivered a double podium.
But team boss Mike Krack contends that the British outfit should not be downbeat about its failure to add a sixth podium in seven races in 2023, insisting the damage was done on the opening stint.
“We should not be disappointed with this result – even though we did not quite have the pace to fight for the podium today,” he expressed.
“It was in the first stint on the soft that we did not quite have the performance to catch the cars ahead and in the second and third stints we managed our pace and had a comfortable advantage over the teams behind us.”
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