It certainly wasn’t the Saturday Fernando Alonso had been hoping for.
Aston Martin brought upgrades to Imola in a bid to find some extra performance as the championship campaign moves to Europe. However, they were unable to extract the maximum out of their package as Alonso endured a difficult Saturday, suffering a crash at Rivazza in the final practice session before making a surprise early exit in qualifying.
“One of those days that everything went wrong,” Alonso lamented afterwards. “Starting on FP3 obviously with a crash, quite heavy. The mechanics did a good job to make everything ready for Q1 and then in Q1, yeah, I mean a combination of things to be honest.”
Alonso initially ran with a heavy fuel load to make up for lost time with several consecutive laps. As he was preparing to attempt a proper low-fuel run, he was called into the pits due to an unknown issue, ultimately placing 19th—the lowest starting position for Alonso since he joined Aston Martin.
“We started with fuel for the whole session, just to give me a little bit of laps and practice, just preparing some pit stops. I set the lap time at the very beginning when the car was heavy on fuel and then when the car was light at the end and we put the last set of tyres, I had to box for an unknown problem, they called me box, so it was quite painful.
“I asked three or four times if for sure you want to box now and yeah. So I’m sorry for the mechanics because they deserve to be better after the job that they have done but yeah, one of those days that everything goes in the wrong place.”
Lance Stroll didn’t fare much better, ending up 13th.
“Yeah, the car felt a little bit faster this morning compared to yesterday before the crash and now into qualifying the car also felt good,” Alonso said of the modified AMR24.
“As I said, that lap is the first lap of the day for me on soft tyres and heavy on fuel so I think there is a little bit of pace in hand. But yeah, the upgrades, I think the team is the one to analyse it and to comment on it.
“I think we have a lot of data from yesterday, especially FP1, Lance was with the old package, FP2 with the new package, so plenty to go through and get better and more prepared for Monaco.”
Alonso is bracing himself for a “tough” outing on Sunday as it’s notoriously tricky to overtake at Imola.
“I think tomorrow is going to be tough,” he admitted. “Imola is one of the worst places to start at the back. I think it’s the second most difficult circuit to overtake just behind Monaco. Singapore ranks easier than Imola to overtake so that tells everything.
“It’s going to be a tough race but we should be able to learn something about the package as well.”
Alonso conceded it might be worthwhile to consider a pitlane start given the circumstances: “I don’t know, the car and as I said, I had to box so I’m not sure what the car has exactly. So we start from the pit, there is also some benefits as well.
“We saw the crash in F2 at the start as well. We need to avoid those kind of things for the quantity of parts that we have at our Formula 1 team. So it could be an option because points I think are a little bit unrealistic tomorrow.”
After his crash in FP3, Alonso again took a trip through the gravel in the opening segment of qualifying. He wasn’t the only one, as many drivers explored the gravel trap throughout the weekend so far, including Max Verstappen. Sergio Perez even suffered a crash in the same practice session as Alonso.
“I think the modern cars are quite tricky and quite more, let’s say, on the edge of everything when you put the downforce in,” Alonso said. “And Imola is quite bumpy, it’s one of those circuits that is a little bit outdated in terms of running these wide, big cars and so low on the ground.
“But it’s the same for everybody and it offers different challenges in terms of setup and you can go into different directions. So it’s good to have a mix in the championship.”
Despite his misadventures, Alonso admitted he enjoys the challenge of navigating a gravel-laden circuit such as Imola.
“Definitely better these kind of places than the run-off area that’s very forgiving. Even if today is in my hands, in my case, I still prefer these kind of things.”
