Fernando Alonso reckons gravel at Turn 6 cost him in F1 Australian GP, as Lance Stroll credits team allowing him score well despite lack of pace.
While others had their moments, Aston Martin pair of Alonso and Stroll chipped in slowly in F1 Australian GP. They were fighting for the lower rug of points. But it came undone for the Spaniard when in drying conditions, he lost at Turn 6 and crashed out of the grand prix.
Post-race, Alonso reckoned his crash was down to gravel at Turn 6. After what happened in 2024, the FIA along with the promoters decided to add gravel in the corner. Throughout the weekend, drivers kept running wide on the gravel and spewed it all on the circuit, adding more to their troubles.
In fact, the practice session was red flagged to clear the circuit. Alonso feels it was gravel at Turn 6 which led him to crash out. “I need to review the incident, but difficult to understand at the moment,” he said to media. “I think I was not off track while putting the car on a different racing line than any other lap before. So I found a lot of gravel just there in that moment where I put the rear tyre and I lost the car.
“So that Turn 6 design probably is not the best, bringing gravel to the track and not away from the track. It was same for everybody, mistake today. I think we had a lot of damaged cars. I think Antonelli in qualifying destroyed the floor there. We should never have a corner that the gravel goes into the track, because that’s a danger for the drivers, marshals, everyone.
“So that’s number one priority. I think Turn 6 will have to do a little bit of a tweak. It was just the white lines, it’s a semi-street circuit, so Melbourne is going to be always difficult. And you feel like a passenger on the car, because the car goes and that’s it, you crash. My case again, it’s a little bit different, because it was not a white line. The track was completely dry.
“It was a dry line. In fact, people changed for dry tyres immediately after my crash. So it was just gravel, a lot of gravel into the track. And I was surprised about that,” summed up Alonso, who admitted that Aston Martin has to work on their weaknesses as they found out in the grand prix despite having managed to battle certain cars.
“It was okay, quite positive from the weekend in general,” said Alonso. “I was in the mix, maybe a little bit faster than Gasly, but difficult to overtake when there is only one racing line which is dry and outside of that is wet.
“We kept Antonelli for a few laps behind, so yeah, there are some weaknesses that we need to tackle, tackle but at the same time we found ourselves in the mix with all the other cars and if we do good weekends we can score good points.”
Teammate Stroll, meanwhile, managed to see-through without any major issues. He had a quite race but managed to finish sixth to score crucial points. The Canadian credited the team for the strategy to help him finish higher up in the order, as he focused on not crashing out.
“It was the team that called it, they were looking at the forecast and saw that it had started raining already on the other side of the track,” said Stroll to media. “They called me in, so I had nothing to do with it. I saw everyone spinning and saw a lot of rain on my visor, so it was one of those races where it was about staying on the track and then being on the right tyre at the right time.
“I was just focusing on not crashing. It was a balance between pushing and going one second a lap faster with a 90% chance of crashing, or going one second a lap slower with a 50% chance of crashing. There was a high level of being in the uncomfortable zone today.
“There were very few moments in the race where I was in a comfort zone just cruising. I was always kind of tippy-toeing around. We have to keep pushing to make the car faster, I think today was one of those races where I got a lot out of it but we had crazy moments,” summed up Stroll.
Here’s how F1 Australian GP panned out
