Fernando Alonso explains strategy in F1 Chinese GP with no tyres left, as he adds on the last corner snap and fight back.
With lack of tyres at his disposal, Aston Martin were forced for an unusual strategy in F1 Chinese GP under the safety car. They went for the soft tyre in the middle stint and change to medium for the last stint where he dropped to outside the Top 10.
He then recovered to seventh where he would have likely finished. It included a big last corner moment which he managed to save and even set the fastest lap. “We didn’t have any more hard tyres,” said Alonso when asked about the strategy. “We had one soft and one medium and 35 laps in front of us which, in our calculations, it was not possible to make it to the end.
“There were a lot of safety car laps to remove the Sauber and once the safety car came in, more safety car laps because they crashed. That was I think the lack that the hard cars had to finish the race. I felt fast on the last stint but the positions were not looking good when I was P10. It was difficult and it was our only strategy to do.
“But it was good to have the fastest lap, good to feel the car fast. We have a good DRS this year so it was very easy to overtake. I nearly crashed at the last corner, I was pushing my maximum. And lets see if we can improve, so far the first five races show the same trend, we are still missing a good half a second in race pace and this is the thing that we should start focusing on now,” summed up Alonso.
Team boss Mike Krack added: “We thought, it’s probably better to use it – because we had a new soft remaining – to use that one. It was a little bit of a risk. Then when the safety car came, or to say, this extended safety period – you could not make use of the soft in that time. Then it was about limiting the damage.
“All in all, if you look at the pace of the car, which was not good enough in the race, the optimum result without the safety car would have been maybe.” After his Lap 1 run in the sprint race, Alonso had another moment in the main race but didn’t get to lead the grand prix. He knew he had to fall back considering the race pace he had.
“The same with Lewis, I was P2 when Lando went off and I said ‘OK, I may try to lead the race for at least one lap’,” said Alonso. “In the race, I passed Checo and thought, ‘OK, I will do it again’ but I had no choice or opportunity. Hopefully one day soon. The wind direction changed this morning so in Turns 1 and 2 it was a headwind.
“So I knew that if I was parallel to someone in Turns 1 and 2, I had the opportunity to attack. I was very aggressive. Then eventually, you fall back to your natural position, which is ninth and 10th. We keep repeating the same things but we see every Sunday that we are the fifth-fastest team.
“But for whatever reason, they [Aston’s rivals] don’t put the laps together on a Saturday, we qualifying in front of them and then there is this fight every Sunday. Let’s see if we can improve the car and we can do better,” summed up Alonso.
Here’s the last corner snap for Fernando Alonso: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2024-chinese-grand-prix-alonso-catches-huge-snap-to-avoid-late-crash-in-shanghai.1796937385057970349.html
Here’s fastest lap from Fernando Alonso: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.dhl-fastest-lap-award-2024-chinese-grand-prix.1796946743815712140.html
Here’s Daniel Ricciardo with some harsh words for Lance Stroll
Here’s how F1 Chinese GP panned out
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