Fernando Alonso drops from sixth to tenth at Silverstone due to a tactical error – and doesn’t hold back with criticism of the team and the strategy department…
Fernando Alonso was angry. Pretty angry. Initially in sixth place in the race at Silverstone, solidly ahead of Carlos Sainz, he suddenly found himself in tenth place during the first safety car phase. “All the people we lost places to have worse tires now? Or did we just lose places for fun?” he radioed to his race engineer Andrew Vizard.
What he heard was not good news: Esteban Ocon in P7 had not yet stopped and was the only driver with “significantly older tires.” Lance Stroll and Nico Hülkenberg had slipped through because they had switched to fresh intermediates earlier. Hülkenberg “came in one lap earlier than you, I think,” Vizard radioed. A white lie. In reality, it was three laps.
George Russell had also gotten past Alonso thanks to his earlier stop, so the 43-year-old Spaniard’s strong performance in the early stages initially went unrewarded. “Crazy how you guys never get it right with me,” he grumbled.
Particularly annoying: teammate Stroll had come in a lap earlier and was suddenly in fourth place. This was a starting position that would later turn into a real chance for third place when Max Verstappen spun. One could argue that the old fox Alonso would probably not have let Hülkenberg catch him out as easily as Stroll did.
Alonso: Why did no one react to Stroll’s times?
In situations like this, Alonso sighs, “his side of the garage,” i.e., his teammate, who happens to be the boss’s son, “is usually more accurate. They did a good job. Lance was already in twice before I made my first stop. And suddenly he was third.”
“That’s what I don’t understand sometimes: we have another car that could give us information, and if he’s third, then I don’t understand why we don’t use the information from the other side of the garage. It’s a home-made problem.”
Stroll had used the VSC phase at the end of the sixth lap to switch from intermediates to softs. In the second sector of the seventh lap, he was 4.2 seconds faster than Alonso, in just 40 seconds of driving time. From the sixth to the tenth lap, Stroll completely closed the 18-second gap to Alonso. Until it started raining again. There would have been enough time to react, even with Alonso.
Aston Martin brought the Canadian in first again, and suddenly Stroll was in fourth place and Alonso was only tenth. No wonder the Spaniard wasn’t happy – even if he concedes to his command center: “The first stop was difficult to read. I understand that. […] We were in P6, and you don’t take risks there. But we came out behind Esteban, Lance, and Nico. They all made a better decision.“
Alonso: ”Anyone who says that is talking bullshit.”
Alonso makes it clear that he does not see himself responsible for this, but only the team: “Anyone who says that a driver can read the conditions and win races like that is talking bullshit. It’s all purely data-driven.” And: “I have the experience, but I don’t have the data. Radar, tire temperature, graining, lap times of the opponents: I don’t have any of that in the cockpit. If they tell me to pit, I pit. I can only say what the conditions are like. Nothing more.”
It wasn’t to be the only tactical mistake in Alonso’s race. He was in eighth place, six seconds behind Stroll (5th) and two seconds ahead of Verstappen, as the track gradually dried out. So the Aston command center took a risk and brought him in ahead of everyone else to switch to slicks.
A fiasco. Alonso was 3.2 seconds slower than Stroll on dry tires in the second sector of his first lap. By the time Verstappen had also completed his tire change, the Red Bull was no longer two seconds behind Alonso, but 17 seconds ahead of him. “The team thought the intermediate tires were losing surface temperature, so they brought me in. That cost us another 25 seconds. Frustrating,” he said angrily.
“The first stop was two or three laps too late, the second was two or three laps too early. That ultimately makes the difference between Nico finishing on the podium from 19th on the grid and us finishing ninth from seventh. It shows that we must have done something wrong,” Alonso analyzed, but at the same time he was conciliatory: “In Austria, the strategy earned us points that weren’t really there. And here it cost us points.”
Team boss understands anger on the pit radio
The core criticism of why Aston Martin didn’t simply follow Stroll’s tactics with Alonso now seems difficult to refute in hindsight. But team boss Andy Cowell defends his crew: “When we were thinking about the strategy in the morning, Fernando was in P7 and Lance was in P18. Those are two completely different starting positions. Accordingly, the approach can also be different.”
“Now, after the race, we are all smarter. In Monday morning coaching, you can take your time to look at what the ideal race would have been. It probably would have been better to do exactly what Lance did with Fernando,“ says Cowell, explaining the situation of the early second pit stop: ”Everyone was thinking about coming in. We could hear that on the pit radio. In hindsight, we were too early with Fernando.”
Cowell understands why Alonso was annoyed: “All of us who have been in this competitive world for a long time know that you often don’t see the big picture in the cockpit. And it’s always frustrating when a series of pit stops happens and you lose places as a result. Then you want to know why. We’ve heard radio messages like that from every single driver. They sound personal, but they’re not.“
At least the updates seem to be helping
At least Alonso can chalk up a positive on the plus side, saying that Aston Martin has taken ”a step forward” with its latest updates: “The car felt a little better. […] It was a small upgrade package, but one that is very welcome. When it’s so close that five or six cars are within a tenth of a second, even half a tenth makes a difference.”
And, more importantly, “It shows that the team is pushing and not giving up. We’re not satisfied with driving around in midfield. We want to get as close as possible to the top teams by the end of the season.” But there is still a long way to go. After twelve of 24 Grands Prix, Aston Martin is only in eighth place in the Constructors’ Championship.
