After a disastrous Saturday, the Silverstone team made the best out of what otherwise was a bad weekend. At the end of the 63 lap race, Lance Stroll took the chequered flag and came 9th, whilst Alonso came 19th after attempting to remove George Russell’s extra point for the fastest lap.
Following Fernando Alonso’s poor qualifying, he was forced to start the race in the pit lane as the team made some setup changes to the AMR24. The Spaniard started on a set of fresh Softs whilst his Canadian teammate started on 1 lap scrubbed Mediums from P13.
For the first lap, Stroll and Ocon engaged in some hard but fair racing for 12th position, with their respective front tyres making contact twice. Come lap 9 Alonso boxes for 1 lap scrubbed Hards, signing him up for a two stop strategy. As Alonso exits the pits he reports that his front left brake was on fire, certainly giving some on the pit wall a fright. Whilst that was happening, Ocon and Stroll were still fighting for position, with Lance winning the battle come lap 12. (WATCH HERE)
On lap 22, Lance was told he was still on plan A and he later said on lap 24 that when he can control rising temperatures, the car feels stable. During lap 27, Ocon pitted for Hards whom was a potential threat for Stroll scoring essential points for the team. Lap 30 came when Chris Cronin told Alonso to defend against Ocon to protect his teammate – after 7 laps the Spaniard’s defense was thwarted. During this period, Stroll notified the team that he felt the tyres were getting “better and better” which is shown through the 22 laps completed in sub 1:22.000s.
Lance was one of the last remaining drivers needed to pit in the race, and the green team were waiting for his pit window to open without him exiting into traffic. Fortunately, Logan Sargeant boxed for Mediums on Lap 33. Come lap 35 with Ocon gaining on Alonso, Andrew Vizard told Lance to push on the compound. On lap 38, he boxes for scrubbed Hard, where he falls to 13th from 9th.
This commenced the final part of Lance’s race for points. He was gaining on his opponents by 9 tenths / lap, where he overtook Bottas on lap 40, Ricciardo on 44, Hulkenberg on 46 and Tsunoda during lap 51.
Whilst this was happening, Alonso pitted again for scrubbed Mediums on lap 42 and proceeded to set the then fastest lap of 1:19.851. Unfortunately, Russell boxed two lap used Mediums and set a 1:18.589 during lap 56. The pitwall and Alonso decided that he’d try and remove that point from the young Brit as he had nothing to lose, with Alonso boxing on lap 61 for fresh softs.
Alonso exited just in-front of Lance Stroll who overtook him on lap 62 to allow him to receive DRS + a tow down the main straight for his push lap. The Spaniard decided to abort his fastest lap attempt as he realised he wasn’t going to be able to beat Russell’s attempt and didn’t want to damage any more parts.
After what was a catastrophic Saturday for the team, a good strategy and teamwork on Sunday scored us valuable points.
FERNANDO ALONSO POST RACE INTERVIEW:
“We need to wait and see with all the data we’ve gathered today and ask the team what they saw different between the two cars. We opted for [two] different setup[s] with the cars – let’s see if we find a direction for the next few races. It was a tough weekend. Obviously qualifying takes everything here and it will be the same in Monaco so we need to have a perfect Saturday which makes things easier for Sunday”
“We started from the pit lane and changed a few things on the setup of the car. It meant that we could gather a lot of data which we need to analyse over the next couple of days. We opted for the Soft tyres at the start of the race and we were hoping for a Safety Car to change things up. When nothing happened ahead of us, we looked to try a few different compounds out and essentially used it as a bit of a test session. We will need to regroup and put ourselves in the best position in Monaco.”
LANCE STROLL POST RACE INTERVIEW:
“Yeah we were hoping for a Safety car [so] we stayed out for a very long time. At the end it was fun to pass some cars”
“This weekend has been tough though. We know we’re not as competitive as we want to be, and we’ll have to push hard to find the performance we’re missing”
