In his 150th Formula 1 race, Lance Stroll managed to secure two points for Aston Martin, coming through from P13 on the grid to finish in 9th.
Stroll started on the medium tyre and overtook Esteban Ocon in the opening laps for P12. But unlike Tsunoda, Hülkenberg and Ricciardo, he extended his first stint.
The Canadian driver had 25-lap fresher hard tyres than the two RBs and Hülkenberg following his pit stop, and he used them to easily pass the aforementioned trio. In the end, he finished 24s ahead of Tsunoda on a difficult weekend for the Silverstone-based squad.
Stroll gave only a few short words post-race about his day.
“It’s a good result, we wanted much more, so we keep pushing.
“It was fun to pass some cars at the end of the race.”
The team went all-in with their Imola updates, consisting of a revised front wing and nose, floor, diffuser, engine cover and rear corner, including tweaks to the rear suspension.
However, things did not go well at all. Alonso crashed in FP3 and had an excursion through the gravel in Q1, ending up last before Sargeant’s time was deleted. The Canadian was P13 in Q2 as Aston’s update saw them make no progress compared to Miami.
Stroll believes a completely separate upgrade might be needed if they cannot get more performance out of the Imola updates soon.
“We have to figure out if we can unlock this or if we need a completely new update.”
Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack said Alonso “played the team game perfectly” by making an early pit stop to get others to come in and help Stroll secure ninth place. Bottas, Gasly, Albon, Ricciardo, Tsunoda Hülkenberg all pitted before lap 15.
“Lance made his one-stop race work with a long first stint, while Fernando’s early pit stop on lap eight helped draw several cars in for early stops,” said Krack. “Lance was then able to make strong overtakes into turn one on [Nico] Hulkenberg and [Yuki] Tsunoda to secure P9.
“It was not easy to overtake, so it was great to watch Lance making those moves. It was always going to be difficult for Fernando to progress to the points after the difficult qualifying, but he played the team game perfectly.”
