Fernando Alonso cruised home to a decent sixth place during last weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix. Starting just in front of Lewis Hamilton he managed to hold off his former teammate for quite a bit, but eventually had to let the seven-time World Champion go as Mercedes delivered the goods in pit lane, resulting in a rather uneventful race for the Aston Martin driver.
“Definitely a little bit of a lonely race for us, not much to do in front of us. They were a little bit too fast and not many threats behind.
“A little bit of defending with Lewis, but he was definitely one of the fastest on track, so that was a matter of time that we will lose that position.
“And yeah, I think a difficult race to execute for everyone. The track was just two metres wide with the dry line, so you cannot put a tyre outside of that dry line.
“So all in all, I think we saved the day. Double points for the team, we have to be happy.”
The downpour prior to the race, and the additional rain halfway in made for tricky conditions, which resulted in only three DNF’s due to incidents, something Alonso was a bit surprised by.
“I was amazed that nothing happened for many, many laps, no incidents, nothing, because the conditions were extremely hard,” the Spaniard explained. “So yeah, well done to everyone.”
The race provided some tactical challenges for the pit wall, as the shower during the race came right at the time that most people’s intermediates wore off. So when Logan Sargeant crashed and everyone visited the pits during the subsequent safety car period, the question was whether new intermediates or dry tyres were the better option. Aston Martin opted for the former, a call that proved the right one.
“I think it was the right call,” Alonso explained. “I was a little bit concerned when we stopped at the first stop because the track was dry and we put a new inters because the forecast was predicting a little bit of rain, but that rain was not happening.
“And I was a little bit concerned that we made the wrong call. I think Charles tried to go for the dry’s, but at the end of the day, we made it okay. And all the calls were okay. All the things were fine.”
In the end, the Aston Martin duo crossed the line in order, Alonso from hometown-hero Lance Stroll, securing good points for the team. The two-time World Champion felt it was the maximum possible, given the conditions and pace of the teams around them.
“Today I think was the maximum. I think we are understanding more and more about the car, about the packages that we introduced this year. Some of them, they need a little bit of fine-tuning in terms of set-up, in terms of maybe direction as well.”
