Aston Martin missed the first three rows of the grid at the home race for the first time in the 2023 Formula 1 season – and clearly.
Having always brought at least one car into the top 6 in the nine previous qualifying sessions, you couldn’t get past P9 and P12 at Silverstone.
“Of course you are with P9 and [P12] never satisfied,” admits Fernando Alonso and explains that it was “not the strongest qualifying session for the team so far”. At the same time, he doesn’t really know “where we can be a little better,” he muses.
In other words: Much more could not have been possible, his own ninth place today was almost the maximum. In Q3 would be “maybe [noch] a tenth, a tenth and a half”, so that he could still have beaten Alexander Albon in the Williams.
“But more than P8 or something like that wasn’t possible,” Alonso clarifies. The Spaniard explains that after Barcelona and Spielberg, where he finished ninth and seventh on Saturday, qualifying at Silverstone was again “uncompetitive”.
“All three [Strecken] seem to be somewhat similar in terms of characteristics. So we have to understand that,” he muses, and Mike Krack explains that it was “one of the most challenging qualifying sessions of the year so far”.
Formula 1: negative trend “a bit track-specific”
The team boss also admits that they didn’t have the pace “to be able to fight for the top positions today.” He emphasizes: “We have to look at things, understand where we can achieve better performance and take these insights into the future.”
Alonso himself is unsure whether Aston Martin simply doesn’t like the route, or whether other teams have passed updates. “I think both play a role,” he muses, explaining that teams like McLaren have “without question” made progress with their updates.
“They were very fast. They deserve their position,” says Alonso about his ex-team and explains: “They were fast and are improving. So I’m happy for them. But let’s wait and see tomorrow and especially the next few races .”
“I think McLaren was also very fast in Austria and Silverstone last year,” said Alonso, who suspects that the recent weaker results are “also a bit track-specific”. That’s why you shouldn’t panic now.
Why was Alonso almost eliminated in Q1?
“Two races ago in Canada we were very strong and fought for victory,” he recalls, explaining that before the last two races before the summer break in Budapest and Spa, you have to do a “reset” and see where we are. “
“The settlement will be settled in Abu Dhabi,” recalls the two-time world champion, who came close to being eliminated in Q1 on Saturday. However, that had nothing to do with the pace, but with a risky strategy by Aston Martin.
Because when the red flag was shown 3:11 minutes before the end of the session, Alonso was second behind Max Verstappen. The team felt relatively safe with it. “So we drove [beim letzten Versuch] out again with a set of tires that was four laps old,” reveals Alonso.
The consequence was that other drivers were able to improve significantly more on new tires than Alonso. In 15th place, the Spaniard only made the cut by a hair’s breadth. Sergio Perez was only 0.019 seconds slower than Alonso in 16th place and thus retired.
Stroll into Q2 without new tires
It was a “bold decision” to have two sets for Q3,” explains Alonso. “It worked,” he emphasizes, explaining: “Sometimes you have to take a risk if you want a reward later. And this time we were lucky.”
Starting from ninth place on the grid, he now expects a “defensive race” on Sunday, in which it’s just a matter of picking up “a few points”. The task in the race is likely to be even more difficult for the teammate, who only comes from twelfth on the grid.
“More could have been done in qualifying today,” says Stroll, explaining: “The red flag forced us to use a third set of tires in Q1, which meant we didn’t have a new set of tires in Q2, which put us in a poor position compared to the others brought behind.”
By the way: Aston Martin has always had at least one car in the top 6 in races this season. Qualifying showed that it is by no means a sure-fire success at Silverstone to continue this series.