Fernando Alonso didn’t care much about team orders in F1 Hungarian GP, as he feels he lost the race the moment he pitted early.
Amid the battle at the front involving McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes, there was radio moments at the fag end of the Top 10 too. Aston Martin played a team game to secure the one point while in the chase of two against Visa Cash App RB’s Yuki Tsunoda.
Alonso was ahead in the pack but Aston Martin asked him to switch with Lance Stroll, who had fresher tyres towards the end of the race. It was the right call considering the Canadian finished just 0.717s behind the Japanese driver.
And Alonso wasn’t miffed either after he was not given the place back. He was more downbeat due to the strategy as he vented out on the radio too. He felt they stopped way too early and it was done and dusted for him, the moment they pitted that early.
“I was not really…I didn’t care too much, it was one point for the team, it doesn’t matter which car takes that point and I think he tried until the last corner, so I think it was the right thing to do,” said Alonso to media. “The strategy wasn’t optimal, very easy to say after the race but at that point, probably the team felt it was a good one.
“I was bit surprised when we stopped in Lap 7 because we talked this morning that our car is hard on tyres. If we stop on Lap 7, we have 63 laps to do with one medium and one hard, so it was a challenge from that point. We didn’t have the pace and the strategy didn’t help.
“We spoke this morning, we have to even out little bit the stint, if not, there is a high price to pay if you do a very long stint with one set of tyres. When they call me to box on Lap 7, I knew that the race was over,” summed up Alonso, who also had few words for the FOM who shared an out of context radio message on Friday during practice.
He was referring to the moment when he wished Aston Martin good luck on the radio when his race engineer asked him about feelings with the car. “I mean, in practice, we were playing a little bit with a few set-up options,” he said. “Yeah, I mean it’s not that I was unhappy or Lance was unhappy.
“They put some radio comments, as usual, very low-level broadcasting. But it’s okay.” His teammate, Stroll, meanwhile, managed to score a point after running long in the first stint, but overall he was left disappointed with the pace of the car.
“Not too happy, we were just poor all day, killing tyres with no pace,” he said. “It was a difficult race for us. I don’t think we optimised the strategy and we were not competitive enough. We struggled with tyre degradation, too.”
Here’s how F1 Hungarian GP panned out
Here’s link to a F1 Discord channel, join in to interact
