Fernando Alonso has contended he could have taken third place in the Sprint race at the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix had Aston Martin pitted him when he requested.
Alonso’s wretched opening to the campaign has continued this weekend as contact with Liam Lawson’s Racing Bulls saw him conclude the truncated race in the wall.
The accident ensured Alonso remains point-less in 2025, though Aston Martin team-mate Lance Stroll capitalised on the mixed conditions and penalties to seize fifth.
However, Alonso believes Aston Martin missed out on the chance to secure more vital points when the pit wall turned down his plea to make an earlier swap to slicks.
The Spaniard had been running eighth behind Lewis Hamilton when the Ferrari driver’s call to discard the Intermediates on Lap 12 propelled him to a third-place finish.
“Yeah, I think I was doing a perfect race, to be honest,” Alonso recalled to media including Motorsport Week.
“Keeping up the pace with Hamilton and [Alex] Albon was a little bit illogical, even starting in the top 10 was illogical yesterday, the performance.
“We didn’t stop for dry tyres. I asked many, many times that I wanted the dry tyres, but yeah, we thought it was not the right moment.
“At the end, we found ourselves fighting with Lawson, which I think is a secondary thing, we should never be in that position and we should be fighting with Hamilton maybe for P3 or P4.”
Alonso indicated that what he was reporting inside the cockpit as the track dried should have taken precedence over the data that triggered Aston’s eventual decision.
“I mean, it’s difficult to read everything and not many cars had a stop in that moment, so it’s very car-dependent, you know,” he explained.
“Sometimes one car can keep up the dry tyres alive easily when it’s damp and vice versa. Some other cars, the Inters, they can hold for longer.
“In our case, it was clear that the Inters were not good enough and yeah, obviously, in the computer it’s difficult to see that.”
Aston Martin has ‘nothing to hide’
Alonso was unable to replicate his earlier exploits in the weekend’s second qualifying session as the AMR25’s slow-speed weakness resigned both drivers to Q1 exits.
“Yeah, I mean, Q1 is our limit at the moment, there is nothing to hide under,” the two-time F1 champion acknowledged.
“Three sets of tyres in Jeddah, three sets of tyres in Bahrain, we ran out of tyres for Q2 normally.
“Here it was just on the limit again, one-tenth up and down.
“I think I still do a reasonable job, I think two-tenths or two-tenths something in front of Lance, which is basically my only competitor at the moment.
“And the other teams, they keep changing. Sometimes it’s Haas, which is fighting in Q1, sometimes it’s Alpine, sometimes it’s Sauber, so it’s difficult to compare to other teams.”
READ MORE – Fernando Alonso: Aston Martin’s 2025 woes not up to Adrian Newey to resolve
Discussion about this post