Fernando Alonso’s consistent performance across the first four races of the season was particularly evident at the 2024 Japanese Grand Prix.
Despite qualifying fifth on Saturday, Alonso drew attention from other teams for preserving a set of soft tyres, a strategy that could have helped at the start. On both standing starts, however, he failed to gain any spots.
Aston Martin’s relative lack of race pace resulted in a sixth-place finish for Alonso, still an impressive achievement.
Explaining his tyre strategy, Alonso remarked: “We didn’t have any other tyre available, so we chose a race since Thursday; we were thinking that that was the best strategy, to have soft, medium, hard into the race is what we executed. I didn’t feel any big penalty on the first stint on the softs, it was more or less okay, so yeah, I think it was not too bad.”
Alonso had Piastri right behind him through the final stint but fended the Australian off. He declared it as one of his greatest weekends in F1.
“Obviously, not fully confident because you never know what the pace of the others will do at the end of the race.
“But yeah, I think it was my best weekend, I don’t know, of the top 5, inside the top 5 ever, for me. I think P5 yesterday in qualifying and P6 today in the race is completely out of position, so yeah, very proud.”
“I think we have the 3 fastest teams by a good margin to the 4th and a good margin to the 5th; we are quite established there, I think there is no way to compare us with Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes, so that’s why to finish P5 and P6 is completely unusual.
“We did it in Australia as well; we finished P6, here P6 again, P5 in Jeddah, so we are executing very well the races and the others they are experimenting a little bit with the strategy and other things, and we are capitalising on those, but we need to improve the pace for sure.”
Alonso opted for the correct strategy as the race drew to a close, finding himself under threat from the faster George Russell who was catching very quickly on mediums. To counter this, Alonso strategically maintained Piastri within his DRS range, using him as a buffer to shield against Russell’s advances.
This tactic has become a standard defensive measure among Formula 1 drivers in the last few years, even more so in recent times as the dirty air continues to get worse with these cars.
Reflecting on his strategy, Alonso humorously remarked: “I don’t know what to say anymore. After Australia, they might disqualify me for the rest of the championship.
“It’s clear that having Piastri behind me, that was a way to defend myself against Russell. So yeah, sure, I saved some of the battery in the straight so that Piastri was getting closer.
“I think it was just what Carlos (Sainz) did in Singapore. Give DRS to the driver in P2 to protect yourself from the one running in third, It’s a normal thing like we do in all races.”
