The beginning and the end of this were spectacular, and what happened in between was too realistic. Fernando Alonso revealed the secret of his excellent start and mercilessly took a stab at the FIA, which penalized him after the sprint…
He became an attacker from a great defender. After the bravura victory of his third starting place on Saturday, Fernando Alonso made sure that the Chinese Grand Prix will once again be about keeping up with cars faster than his. His Aston Martin’s race pace was well assessed, as Lando Norris overtook him after only 6 laps and could not keep up with McLaren and Ferrari.
His first tire change took place already on the 11th lap, and he started the second safety car restart on fresh soft tires from 5th place. This initially gave him an advantage, but the soft compound could not last until the end, so they had to make another pit stop.
With this, the defensive Alonso became the attacking Alonso: in the last 12 laps, he overtook Alexander Albon, Esteban Ocon, Nico Hülkenberg, Lewis Hamilton and Oscar Piastri, climbed to 7th place, and even earned the bonus point for the fastest lap.
“It was an incredible competition, a lot happened. It was a good start, I was second at the beginning of the race. Then there were a couple of safety car phases that didn’t help our strategy. The others protected the tire a little better and lasted until the end. We needed one more stop”
Alonso explained.
Fernando Alonso (Photo: XPB)
Soft rubber seemed like a surprising choice at the start, but as he said, it was born out of necessity. In connection with this tactic, Alonso took a stab at the FIA, which now likes to “pick” him up, mentioning the 10-second penalty handed out in connection with his fight against Carlos Sainz on Saturday.
“We only had one hard tire and the safety car came in the middle of the hard stage, which took away our good race tires. We had no choice.”
“Next time, maybe we won’t race the sprint, we’ll save on tires and race more on Sunday. Unless we get some weird punishment…” he told the F1 reporter.
Later, speaking to the Spanish press, he addressed his punishment. “We didn’t have two sets of hard tires, just one soft and one medium, neither of which would have lasted thirty-five laps. We had to stand up one more time.”
“It’s best to save a tire. Maybe it’s better if we don’t start the Saturday sprint. It’s only a point or two at stake anyway, and they’ll give you penalty points on your license anyway, so it’s better not to go out and save the tires, let other people race…”
As for the race, Alonso was pleased with his start, which temporarily catapulted him into second place. His routine helped a lot.
“The wind was strong and the direction was changing. It was a headwind in turns one and two, so I knew there was going to be a lot of grip there. I took a little risk and managed to gain a position. I knew it wasn’t realistic to keep it, because the others would overtake anyway, but I enjoyed it anyway.”
He pointed it out, he also found his hair amusing because he could attack. “Yes, the ending was enjoyable. It’s always more fun when you put on the new kit and run the fastest lap. But overall it was a tough race because we knew we didn’t have the pace. We are still faster on Saturday than Sunday. To put it more precisely: the fifth best car is ours, but the first four races were deceiving because for some strange reason and because other people made mistakes, we got too good places…” – the two-time world champion finally poked at the opponents as well.
