Fernando Alonso expects more difficult races for Aston Martin after the Q2 exit in Barcelona, but remains optimistic for the more distant future
“P11 – sorry.” – Chris Cronin’s announcement is followed by a long silence. Fernando Alonso missed out on Q3 at his home race at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya by 19 thousandths of a second. The two-time world champion was just 0.475 seconds off the best time in Q2. He bid farewell to his fans with a hearty wave from the cockpit
“We knew it would be very close on this track,” he said after qualifying. “I think it will be even more extreme in Austria, because the times there are only between 1:04 and 1:06 minutes.”
Surprisingly, Alonso is satisfied with the result: “Even if it hurts to say that in front of the home stands. But before qualifying, our predictions were a little more pessimistic. We even opted for three new sets of tires for one car in Q1, which shows that we were not overly optimistic.”
However, eleventh place, which became tenth on the grid due to Sergio Perez’s penalty, was “a good result”, said Alonso. He possibly gambled away his place in Q3 in turn 5, the hairpin to the left, where he was quite far away from the apex. The same thing happened in turn 11, the third-to-last on the lap. 19 thousandths are quickly lost there.
But Alonso prefers to look at the big picture. What he doesn’t like so much is Alpine’s pace of development, which in his opinion is slowly leaving Aston Martin behind: “Alpine was ahead of us in Monaco and very close in Canada. And here they are half a tenth ahead. They are getting better and better. And we are probably getting worse. The combination of the two is not great.”
Team-mate Lance Stroll (14th) confirms: “We knew that this would be a tough qualifying session, Q2 was the maximum. The car simply lacks the speed to be able to fight with the top teams on this track. “
Alonso expects updates at Aston Martin in the future, but is bracing himself for a longer dry spell. “It’s going to hurt here, just like in Austria and Silverstone,” he announces. “We have to keep scoring points, and if it’s seventh, eighth, ninth place – it doesn’t matter. We must not give up and must remain positive in these difficult times. “
Saving update only expected in the medium term
And when will the long-awaited update come? “Hopefully before the summer break. I think the team now has a lot of insights into what went right and what went wrong, not only this year but also in the second half of last season. We have a few ideas that should improve performance. But we still have three or four races of pain to endure.”
The Racing Bulls’ qualifying disaster in Spain shows that an update is no panacea. Nevertheless, Alonso is optimistic about the future: “We have a plan. Let’s see if it leads to better results. But we are more confident than we have been in recent months.”
“Last year, we had the first car that the new technical team ever built. We always tried to give the car a bit more power. But sometimes we didn’t add much, we just made the car a bit more difficult and tricky to drive. “
So it was again this year: “Our car behaved differently in Bahrain. And after we introduced the first [update] packages, we changed the characteristics of the car a little. We can counteract this a little with the set-up. We understand everything better and better, but then the next package comes and everything is back to zero. But now we have a plan.”
“They have been working together for a year and a half now. Now we are in a strong position for the future. I’m excited, but in racing only the present counts. And the present is today, the present is Barcelona – and of course that’s painful, but I’m calm about our performance. “
