Ferdinand He assured at the end of the race in Monaco that “we have not had a chance with Max”. But the truth is that the appearance of the rain with 26 laps to go could have changed the scenario for him and Aston Martin. With the first drops, the Spaniard made his stop one lap before Verstappen. Slicks or intermediate tires? The decision was not easy. “I don’t know guys, there are some areas with water, but others are dry,” Fernando indicated. His team has chosen to mount media and when they return to the track, the storm has intensified, ruining the strategy.
The Astart did not go well and Alonso had to return to the pits to finally put the intermediate, now without any option to attack Max, who ended up crossing the finish line with a 27-second advantage. Luckily, Fernando had a large margin compared to third place, Ocon, and was able to maintain his position despite the mistake in the choice of tyres. After getting out of the car, the Spaniard had no complaints and stressed that in this type of situation “it’s easy to talk afterwards”, but not so much to get it right on the fly.
Regarding his exit strategy, he explained that “it has been difficult, we have chosen to start hard, so we gave up a bit on the possibility of attacking in turn 1 due to how short the road is to get there. We played with the strategy to go to a first long stint, but Max managed his medium tires super well and extended that first stint, so we didn’t have a chance.”
“In the end, the rain made things a bit difficult and it was not easy to drive in those conditions. There was no full power on the lap, the braking was extremely weak in Turn 5 and Turn 10, and I was surprised that there were no cars from safety or incidents, so all the drivers did an amazing job today to keep the cars on track,” Fernando said. “We weren’t the fastest and when it started to rain I almost got out, a second was goodtake the car to the finish line, save the car and second, because today we didn’t have the pace we expected.”
When in the ‘corralito’ with the press they have insisted on his failed double pit stop, Alonso has been clear: “It could have been different from riding the entry intermediates, yes. It would have depended on the pit exits. It’s always easy to talk afterwards, especially when you’re in podium position. Betting like this is not so easy, when you go further back, it is easier. We wanted to secure second place,” he concluded.
In championship key, Alonso is already 12 points behind the secondSergio Pérez: “In 2010 (with Ferrari) we were not the fastest and I was the leader at the last race in Abu Dhabi. And in 2012 the same thing happened. I am not thinking about the World Cup but we are not going to forget. Let’s go to be as constant as possible, without errors, and see what happens”.
Without a doubt, nothing tarnishes the fantastic performance of the two-time Asturian champion: “It’s not a win, but it’s been a great race”Fernando said on the team radio. “Well, P1 in the next one,” his track engineer replied. It will be in Barcelona, precisely in the 33rd edition of the Spanish Grand Prix.