Aston Martin responds to Alonso's "ninth-fastest team" claim

According to Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin’s own analysis of its performance places the team eighth in terms of pure pace, and its flashes of speed during Formula 1's United States Grand Prix weekend in Austin were flattered by outside circumstances.

Alonso was fourth in first practice, sixth in sprint qualifying, then started and finished 10th in the grand prix itself, having been eliminated from the sprint race in the first-corner accident. While it has become customary for Alonso to emphasise his contribution to a team’s results, there is some plausibility in this claim given that not only was this a sprint weekend, which is inherently disruptive to the order, but also Pirelli implemented a ‘step’ between the harder compounds.

Most teams chose to run the hard-compound C1s only in practice, where it was clearly much slower than the C3 medium.

"It's a sprint weekend so there is a little bit of a mix and the people getting used to some things, rookies as well – they need to learn the track," he said after the sprint race and qualifying session on Saturday. 

"So, I don't know, in all our metrics we are the eighth-fastest team and yesterday [Friday] we were sixth and 10th [team-mate Lance Stroll was 14th in sprint qualifying]. So, happy in that regard but I don't think that this is a particularly good weekend for the Aston."

After the grand prix Alonso returned to the theme of Aston Martin’s one-lap pace being better than its race pace.

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing

Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images

"We were slow compared to the cars in front of us and we were holding the Racing Bull [of Liam Lawson] behind us," he said. "They were within one second of us the whole race, so that means they had more pace than us. Yep, we struggled a little bit more on the race than any other session on the weekend.
 
"We seem a little bit faster in qualifying and less competitive in the race. We need to improve that for the last five races."
 
Alonso lost two places at the start – to Nico Hulkenberg and Yuki Tsunoda – but regained them when Carlos Sainz hit Andrea Kimi Antonelli, eliminating himself from the race and consigning the Mercedes driver to a long slog back from the tail of the field.

Hulkenberg stretched away to the tune of 14s in the closing stages of the race, a gap into which Oliver Bearman fell after spinning while trying to pass Tsunoda. 11th-placed Lawson spent most of the race within 2-3s of Alonso, closing to within one second after their pitstops but ultimately unable to make his way past.

Asked if finishing 10th was a result of good execution, given the expectation of having the eighth-fastest car, Alonso revised his ranking downwards.

"Probably we are ninth today," he said. "Because I don't feel who is the ninth and the 10th team. I think Alpine maybe is the one that is struggling more but after Alpine, I don't know.

"Haas is clearly in front of us, with Ollie's very strong race. Sauber for sure in front, Williams in another league. There are not many teams behind us at the moment. To be 10th and score one point is a good result but we need to get better for Mexico."

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing

Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images

Chief trackside officer Mike Krack was more equivocal, pointing out the variation in strategies – while most teams went medium-soft, there were some outliers – and the effect of traffic. Alonso’s team-mate was one of three drivers to start on soft-compound tyres, the others being Charles Leclerc and Gabriel Bortoleto, while Esteban Ocon, Alex Albon and Isack Hadjar started on the hards.

Neither of these fitted into Pirelli’s predictions since the hards were too slow, and the softs were only expected to work as part of a two-stop strategy. Bortoleto drew no profit from this but Leclerc and Stroll stretched their opening stints long enough to stop just once, enabling Stroll to rise from 19th on the grid to 12th.

"The analysis is something we need to look at in detail," said Krack. "Because some people run with soft tyres, some people run with hard tyres, some people run with medium tyres.

"I think we need to go through these numbers, see who has traffic, who has DRS and all these kinds of things, before you can really say where you are in the pace.

"There are races, there are circuits where we are performing better, there are circuits where the car has strengths and weaknesses, like every other car. There are weekends, like in Budapest, where it is better suited and there are weekends, like in Baku, where it was not.

"I think that is the challenge over the season, to get the maximum out of it and score whenever you can and do as best as you can. The analysis will be done and then we will go over it."