Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso has labelled his complete performance throughout the Japanese Grand Prix as a “top five” weekend in his extensive Formula 1 career.
Alonso matched his season-best starting spot when he qualified in fifth position but remained cautious due to concerns over Aston Martin’s race pace with the AMR24.
However, the Spaniard dropped one position to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who executed a one-stop race to rise from eighth to fourth, to take the chequered flag in sixth.
Alonso diverged from the rest of the top 10 with the choice to start on the Soft compound, which he admitted was enforced with his allocation for the Suzuka weekend.
“We didn’t have any other tyre available, so we chose our race since Thursday,” Alonso revealed.
“We were thinking that that was the best strategy, to have Soft-Medium-Hard into the race, is what we executed.
“I didn’t feel any big penalty on the first stint on the Soft, it was more or less ok, so yeah, I think it was not too bad.”
Alonso came under increased pressure from Oscar Piastri McLaren in the closing stages, with George Russell’s Medium-shod Mercedes approaching at a rapid rate.
Russell, who crashed chasing Alonso in Australia, touted that his failure to pass Piastri until the final lap came down to the Aston Martin driver providing him with DRS.
Asked how confident he was about retaining sixth place, Alonso said: “Obviously not fully confident, because you never know what the pace of the others will do at the end of the race.
“But yeah, I think it was my best weekend, I don’t know, the top 5, inside the top 5 ever for me.
“I think P5 yesterday in qualifying that lap, and P6 today in the race is completely out of position, so yeah, very proud.”
Expanding upon the claim that it was one of his greatest F1 weekends, Alonso highlighted that he managed to beat both Mercedes’ and a McLaren with a slower car.
While Alonso brought the Silverstone-based squad to within one point of Mercedes in the Constructors’ Championship, team-mate Lance Stroll struggled to 12th place.
“Well I think we are the 5th fastest team by a good margin to the 4th and a good margin to the 6th, we are quite established there,” the two-time champion expanded.
“I think there is no way to compare us with Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes, so that’s why to finish P5 and P6 is completely unusual.
“We did it in Australia as well, we finished P6, here P6 again, P5 I think in Jeddah, so we are executing very well the races.
“And the others they are experimenting a little bit with the strategy and other things, and we are capitalising on those, but we need to improve the pace for sure.”
