Aston Martin gone with the wind: Lance Stroll throws it away in Q1, and Fernando Alonso also criticizes the effect on the car – rain as hope for Sunday
“Gone with the Wind”: Lance Stroll, an avid amateur tennis player, is familiar with the unpleasant effects of the title of the classic film of the same name starring Clark Gable, especially when chasing the ball, but on Saturday in qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix, they also caught up with him in the Formula 1 cockpit.
At turn six, the Canadian went off the track on his last fast lap in Q1, and as a consequence, he was only able to secure the last starting position, one and a half seconds behind. Stroll later explained: “We saw in the data that I caught a gust of wind at about 20 km/h – just bad luck.”
Although Aston Martin team principal Andy Cowell puts this gust of wind at only 12 km/h in retrospect, this number-crunching does little to change the effect, as Stroll explains: “In such corners, it’s often the difference between a clean line and a violent sideways impact. This gust completely threw the car off balance, and from that moment on, it was actually over.”
Stroll on Q1 exit: ‘Would have been extremely close anyway’
The Canadian believes that, in view of his team’s performance, ”It would have been extremely close anyway, the way it looked between all the cars, everything would have had to fit perfectly.” Even in training, circumstances would have made life difficult for Aston Martin, according to Stroll: “The red flags always came at exactly the wrong time. We couldn’t drive on the soft tires in either session and therefore never really had a clear picture of the car. That affected us quite a bit.”
At least the Aston Martin driver has no objection to the rain that has been forecast for Sunday – he was able to benefit from precisely these conditions at the season opener in Australia, finishing sixth. “We definitely need a chance, so yes, so to be honest I’m hoping for some rain,” Stroll confirms.
Team-mate Fernando Alonso will start from 13th position in Suzuka on Saturday, but will move up one place due to the retrospective penalty imposed on his compatriot Carlos Sainz. He is also cautiously optimistic, with the wind also playing a role for Alonso: “Yesterday I felt competitive, but I think today we weren’t as fast with the change in wind direction.”
The Spaniard adds: “I was happy with all my laps in qualifying, and that puts us in P14 in Q1 and P13 in Q2 at the end. So I think that was our pace,” says Alonso, who once again emphasizes: “We need to improve our car if we want to reach Q3.”
