Aston Martin’s search for an illusive first win in 2023 continues as Fernando Alonso finished 2nd in today’s Monaco Grand Prix. On the other side of the garage, Lance Stroll’s miserable weekend concluded with a DNF following contact with other cars and barriers throughout the race.
The decisive moment of the race came at the end of lap 54. Rain started falling two laps earlier and the intensity began to increase.
However, Aston Martin pitted Fernando Alonso and put him on mediums after starting on hards — the crossover point had just been reached. They came back in a lap later to fit intermediates. Red Bull and Verstappen had been left off the hook and could canter to victory from there in the tricky conditions.
Mike Krack explained what happened over those few minutes in his post-race media session. He talked about how they started on hards with Alonso in anticipation of the rain coming. However, it didn’t quite fall their way as Verstappen delivered a magnificent stint on graining mediums to make it to the crossover for inters.
Photo credit: Aston Martin Cognizant F1 Team
“I’m not 100% sure [if fitting mediums instead of inters cost them the lead]. Obviously you try to stay out as long as you can in such conditions when you do not really know what’s really going to happen.”
The Aston Martin team principal said they picked mediums as they didn’t anticipate the rain would be so heavy and they expected the track to dry out quickly without it getting too wet for inters. The rain intensity really just upped its level immediately after the stop, though.
“We did not anticipate so much rain, to be honest. We thought that it would be a short shower and drying quickly because the the was very hot.
“Normally you would say, ‘ok, we stay out one more, two or three more laps’, but the tyres were worn already quite a lot and we saw the temperatures going down, so that was a bit of a risk.
“When the car came in then, with this information, we said, ‘ok, let’s fit the mediums’, but then when the car left, I mean shortly after, we saw that it was really a lot of rain and we had to come back.”
Krack added he believed they made the right call in the circumstances at the very moment they stopped. They believed mediums was to the end was the right call as the track initially was only wet out of the Casino Square section and the run to the hairpin.
“Honestly we thought we could go to the end with the mediums because it would dry quickly, but then we misjudged a bit that it was raining because in this part of the track where we are standing, it took very long before it started to rain.
“I think it’s also this area where it started to rain the least, so probably that was a bit of a misjudgement because we thought also that the inters would wear down massively in this part of the track.
“At the end of the day it was a conscious decision to go on the mediums, and we saw then a lap later that it was not going to work and we decided to pull it back.”
Race winner Verstappen had a solid +10s advantage over Alonso before the rain came in. Krack doesn’t think a victory was lost today.
“I don’t think it was lost because if we had fitted intermediates, Max would have fitted intermediates as well and he had the gap, so I don’t think it would have changed much.”
