Despite missing the podium for the first time this season, Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso was pleased with his and the team’s efforts at Baku on the way to fourth, solidifying their leads over Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes as best of the non-Red Bulls thus far.
“I think the weekend was not maybe as competitive as the first three races. But even with that, I think today in the race the car pace was very good, very strong.
“I think in a bad weekend[…] from Aston, we are fighting for the podium against one of the best weekends for Ferrari. They were in pole position in the sprint race, pole position for the main race. And they were just one second in front of us on Sunday.”
This bad weekend was largely the result of a persistent DRS malfunction that was sorted out just in time for Sunday’s race. Alonso chalked up Aston Martin’s underperformance in the race itself—relative to the opening stretch of the season—to tyre management, something that had been a strong point thus far.
“Unfortunately, with the safety car, we all put the hard tyres, and that tyre was very robust until the end. Without that safety car, I think the Ferraris, they were struggling a lot in the first stint.”
His best chance to improve position came after the safety car came in on lap 14, and he did just that with a gutsy move at turn four on Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz.
“I had a lot of grip on that restart. So yeah, I could have him probably in Turn 3 already, but then he was into Turn 4. Yeah, I don’t know. Not a clear explanation, but the car was working really well today.[… I]t was crucial because then to overtake the Ferraris is never easy. So that overtake put me in a train with Charles [Leclerc], and it was easier to race after that.”
