Fernando Alonso is marking his four-hundredth look in a spherical of the world championship this weekend.
Final yr he joined Aston Martin for his twentieth season in Formulation 1. The transfer paid off as Aston Martin produced a aggressive automobile, had been constantly among the many prime 4 groups and the two-times world champion reached the rostrum eight occasions.
Nevertheless 2024 has been a much more troublesome marketing campaign. Forward of the twentieth spherical at the moment, Alonso has 62 factors, a tally he exceeded within the first 5 occasions of final season. Extra worryingly for the crew, they’ve been scuffling with dealing with issues for a lot of the final yr.
Neither Aston Martin reached Q3 in Mexico final yr. They’ve made some beneficial properties since then: Certainly, solely two groups have improved their lap occasions by extra year-on-year. These are Haas and Alpine which, like Aston Martin, launched vital upgrades for his or her automobile on the final spherical.
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Nonetheless, regardless of Alonso’s finest efforts, Aston Martin’s finest lap time was slower than that of each crew in addition to Sauber (credit score is because of Valtteri Bottas for reaching Q2 within the slowest automobile this weekend). They’re the second-slowest crew for under the second time this yr, after Monaco:
Is {that a} truthful reflection on their tempo? Arguably not. Alonso is satisfied he was on target for a considerably higher time when he needed to abandon his ultimate lap in Q2 attributable to Yuki Tsunoda’s crash. He informed his race engineer Chris Cronin he was on a “mega lap” earlier than the crimson flags got here out, value “two tenths and a half.”
With that, Alonso may have made the lower for Q3. There he ought to have benefited from the bettering monitor situations and set a faster lap. Nevertheless there are others which could declare the identical.
Purple flags which disrupt qualifying periods invariably produce losers and winners. Pierre Gasly is a transparent instance of the latter, bagging a better grid place than his sector occasions indicated he deserved – and he was solely six-thousandths of a second off pipping Kevin Magnussen to seventh.
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| P. | # | Driver | S1 | S2 | S3 | Final 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 (6) | 1’16.191 (+0.074) |
| 5 | 63 | George Russell | 27.361 (8) | 29.263 (2) | 19.624 (2) | 1’16.248 (+0.108) |
| 6 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | 27.295 (6) | 29.546 (6) | 19.688 (5) | 1’16.529 (+0.122) |
| 7 | 22 | Yuki Tsunoda | 27.446 (12) | 29.578 (8) | 19.7 (7) | 1’16.724 (+0.405) |
| 8 | 20 | Kevin Magnussen | 27.272 (5) | 29.624 (12) | 19.854 (11) | 1’16.750 (+0.136) |
| 9 | 23 | Alexander Albon | 27.344 (7) | 29.58 (9) | 19.855 (12) | 1’16.779 (+0.209) |
| 10 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | 27.382 (10) | 29.592 (11) | 19.841 (9) | 1’16.815 (+0.180) |
| 11 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | 27.418 (11) | 29.585 (10) | 19.847 (10) | 1’16.850 (+0.042) |
| 12 | 81 | Oscar Piastri | 27.376 (9) | 29.546 (6) | 20.006 (17) | 1’16.928 (+0.669) |
| 13 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | 27.463 (13) | 29.665 (14) | 19.898 (15) | 1’17.026 (+0.142) |
| 14 | 30 | Liam Lawson | 27.579 (17) | 29.64 (13) | 19.833 (8) | 1’17.052 (+0.110) |
| 15 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | 27.562 (16) | 29.705 (15) | 19.885 (14) | 1’17.152 (+0.241) |
| 16 | 18 | Lance Stroll | 27.504 (14) | 29.848 (17) | 19.873 (13) | 1’17.225 (+0.069) |
| 17 | 43 | Franco Colapinto | 27.769 (20) | 29.832 (16) | 19.936 (16) | 1’17.537 (+0.021) |
| 18 | 11 | Sergio Perez | 27.555 (15) | 29.859 (18) | 20.124 (20) | 1’17.538 (+0.073) |
| 19 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | 27.658 (18) | 29.887 (19) | 20.072 (18) | 1’17.617 |
| 20 | 24 | Zhou Guanyu | 27.746 (19) | 30.217 (20) | 20.109 (19) | 1’18.072 |
On the sharp finish of the grid, Ferrari set the outright quickest lap time, as additionally they did in Baku, the place they weren’t in a position to convert it to victory. Purple Bull’s current enchancment was underlined by Max Verstappen’s second place on the grid, which meant McLaren had been out-paced by two rival groups for the primary time because the Canadian Grand Prix. However as at all times, what meaning for his or her race tempo will likely be most important.
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