It was a mixed bag for Aston Martin at the F1 Qatar GP, with Fernando Alonso coming home in 7th—his and the team’s first points since Singapore—but Lance Stroll exiting shortly after a collision with Alex Albon on the opening lap.
The result virtually assures Aston Martin of a 5th place finish in the constructors’ title, up 43 points on Alpine heading to Abu Dhabi.
Alonso: “Confused” car finishes P7
Alonso called his 8th-place starting position “a good surprise”. However, his race was hampered early on by an ERS deployment problem that dropped him from 8th to 12th after the lap 4 restart from the opening safety car period.
“I think the car is confused, still thinking that we are behind the safety cars, so we don’t deploy the energy properly out of the last corner when there is a green flag and that obviously is very costly if you don’t deploy the energy when you have all the cars around you.”
Steady amidst the chaos
Alonso regained the positions by the time the second safety car period started for debris on lap 35. After pitting to fall back to 10th, he regained those positions when Sergio Perez retired, and he managed to overtake Zhou Guanyu on the restart.
The penalty to Lando Norris for speeding under yellow moved the Aston Martin up to P7, and Alonso steadily brought it home for the points.
“The P7 is better than we anticipated, obviously we capitalised on some of the action in front of us, some DNFs, some penalties, so we were ready there to take the opportunity and happy for that.”
“I think it was a good surprise and today in the race we were relatively fast together with Alpine and Haas.
“And yeah, as I said, a little bit lucky at the end with all the safety cars and penalties of Norris and DNF of Checo.
“So yeah, you have to be there.
“Sometimes when we are P14, P15, even if there is something happening in front of you, you don’t take the opportunity, so we were in the right place at the right time today.”
Stroll, “not trying to fight”, still loses the battle
Unfortunately Lance Stroll was unable to steadily bring the other Aston Martin at the F1 Qatar GP home. After colliding with Alex Albon’s Williams on lap 1, he retired with crash damage after eight laps and a penalty for avoidable contact.
“I was not trying to fight him. I was just trying to hold my line on the inside of the corner, but I just started picking up huge levels of understeer and washed out and made contact.”
One more on the road
While Stroll hasn’t scored since Hungary, after breaking his own drought Alonso remarked “it will be nice to finish on a positive note in Abu Dhabi as well.”
Aston Martin will recharge one more time as Alonso and Stroll prepare to take the grid at Abu Dhabi. Both drivers will aim for one more up in what has been an up and down season for the team.
