Fernando Alonso is marking his 400th appearance in a round of the world championship this weekend.
Last year he joined Aston Martin for his 20th season in Formula 1. The move paid off as Aston Martin produced a competitive car, were consistently among the top four teams and the two-times world champion reached the podium eight times.
However 2024 has been a far more difficult campaign. Ahead of the 20th round today, Alonso has 62 points, a tally he exceeded in the first five events of last season. More worryingly for the team, they have been struggling with handling problems for much of the last year.
Neither Aston Martin reached Q3 in Mexico last year. They have made some gains since then: Indeed, only two teams have improved their lap times by more year-on-year. These are Haas and Alpine which, like Aston Martin, introduced significant upgrades for their car at the last round.
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Nonetheless, despite Alonso’s best efforts, Aston Martin’s best lap time was slower than that of every team besides Sauber (credit is due to Valtteri Bottas for reaching Q2 in the slowest car this weekend). They are the second-slowest team for only the second time this year, after Monaco:
Is that a fair reflection on their pace? Arguably not. Alonso is convinced he was on course for a significantly better time when he had to abandon his final lap in Q2 due to Yuki Tsunoda’s crash. He told his race engineer Chris Cronin he was on a “mega lap” before the red flags came out, worth “two tenths and a half.”
With that, Alonso could have made the cut for Q3. There he should have benefited from the improving track conditions and set a quicker lap. However there are others which might claim the same.
Red flags which disrupt qualifying sessions invariably produce losers and winners. Pierre Gasly is a clear example of the latter, bagging a higher grid position than his sector times indicated he deserved – and he was only six-thousandths of a second off pipping Kevin Magnussen to seventh.
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| P. | # | Driver | S1 | S2 | S3 | Ultimate lap (deficit) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 55 | Carlos Sainz Jnr | 27.037 (1) | 29.296 (3) | 19.533 (1) | 1’15.866 (+0.080) |
| 2 | 4 | Lando Norris | 27.204 (3) | 29.191 (1) | 19.67 (4) | 1’16.065 (+0.195) |
| 3 | 1 | Max Verstappen | 27.222 (4) | 29.318 (4) | 19.631 (3) | 1’16.171 |
| 4 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | 27.069 (2) | 29.429 (5) | 19.693… |
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