Alonso pointed to Saturday as the cause that limited his result in the Spanish GP. He was seventh in the race, but started from eighth after a difficult qualifying. Before starting his first attempt at Q1 he lost the car at turn 14 and gravel damaged much of the flat bottom. Even so, at Aston Martin they highlight that both the driver and the team were able to extract the maximum in Q1, Q2 and Q3 given how the AMR23 floor was left.
“It was in the first lap of Q1. He had a whiplash, maybe because of a small patch (of water) or because he was going too fast. So it was a blow to lose grip because the track wasn’t too good. When you enter the gravel at that speed it’s like you’re shooting a sandblaster from under the car. Some of the fins underneath were ripped off, so we weren’t in an optimal situation,” explains Tom McCullough, Performance Director.
“It caused significant damage. we were able to repair the car every time it came back to the garage and we slowly improved it until the end of qualifying, when we had practically made up half the deficit according to the data. In addition, we had a group of people monitoring the data at the factory and they could tell us how it was evolving during the session, that is very important for the track engineers to adapt the angles of the ‘flaps’ to extract a good balance from the car. says the British engineer.
On Alonso’s performance thereafter: “I think the damage in Q1 was particularly big, so it’s very positive that it could happen. What was hard for Fernando is that in each batch we had to repair the car and we didn’t really know how we would be, from an aerodynamic point of view, until we went out on track. So Fernando had to adapt, that he is quite good at it, and he did a great job ”. It’s a pity that in the Q3 attempt, the Spaniard went wide at turn 10 when he was aiming for the top-3. Because that ended his podium chances in front of his home fans in Montmeló.