Fernando Alonso described the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix as the “most boring race ever” after finishing in the lowest position he ever has in his career.
The Aston Martin driver finished 19th. He has only placed that low in a race once before, in Mexico two years ago, though on that occasion he was classified despite his car stopping in the closing stages.
He qualified 19th but Aston Martin decided to make changes to his car’s set-up which meant he had to start from the pits. That left Alonso hoping for some kind of disruption in the race which would bring him into contention, but none came.
“It’s that kind of weekend where it’s a little bit frustrating that on the race you know more or less what is going to happen,” he told the official F1 channel.
“You obviously hope for some Safety Cars or red flags or something that can mix a little bit the race. But, today as usual when we start at the back at zero, the most boring race ever.”
Aston Martin introduced a significant upgrade to its AMR24 this weekend. After Alonso failed to progress beyond Q1 they took the opportunity to vary the set-ups between his car and that of team mate Lance Stroll.
Alonso expects that will give them useful information for the coming races. “We need to wait and see all the data that we’ve gathered today and ask the team what they saw difference between the two cars,” he said.
“We opted for two set-ups, different on my car, and let’s see if we find our direction for the next few races.
“It was a tough weekend. Obviously, qualifying dictates everything here. It will be the same in Monaco. So we need to do that perfect Saturday that obviously makes things easier for Sunday.”
Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack said Alonso “played the team game perfectly” by making an early pit stop to provoke others to come in and help Stroll secure ninth place.
“Lance made his one-stop race work with a long first stint, while Fernando’s early pit stop on lap eight helped draw several cars in for early stops,” said Krack. “Lance was then able to make strong overtakes into turn one on [Nico] Hulkenberg and [Yuki] Tsunoda to secure P9.
“It was not easy to overtake, so it was great to watch Lance making those moves. It was always going to be difficult for Fernando to progress to the points after the difficult qualifying, but he played the team game perfectly.”
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2024 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix
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