Fernando Alonso drove the F1 Monaco GP thinking he was running in points, as Lance Stroll rues the late puncture which denied him a chance of a point.
Even though qualifying more or less decided their positions, Aston Martin still had hope to try and get itself into points in F1 Monaco GP at least with one car. That’s why they deployed Alonso to create a gap for Stroll to pit and catch Alpine’s Pierre Gasly.
And he did so too but to his unfortunate luck, Stroll suffered a puncture and it all came undone on his new set when the Canadian was pushing to catch Gasly. It was too late for Alonso to push on a set of medium compound which was degrading.
Further adding to his bitter luck, only after the race Alonso found out that he was not running 10th but 11th in reality. All of the grand prix, he thought once Stroll was out of contention, it was he who was running to defend the last point from Daniel Ricciardo.
He didn’t realise about his position after the red flag restart. “It was very difficult to keep the tyres alive,” said Alonso. “At one point we thought we’d try a different strategy with Lance – a pit stop to attack Gasly, we were out of the points with nothing to lose. But I got confused because when we built the gap and Lance was in front of me after the pitstops, they said, ‘okay, we secured 10th.’
“We’ve been doing all this for that last point. Then Lance had the puncture, I said, ‘Oh, now I have all the responsibility in my shoulders with very old tyres to bring this point back home.’ I was driving for 50 laps thinking that I was 10th. And then when I crossed the line and they told me P11, I said, ‘Oh, so, uh, all that stress for nothing.’ But anyway, it kept me alive. I don’t know why that happened.
“When the red flag came out, Lance was P10, I was P12. And then at one point they reinstated Sainz in P3, so we were 12th and 14th, we should be 13th and 14th, but Lance was in front of Daniel that he was not supposed to be. So I don’t know in which position I started, and I don’t know in which position I was driving.
“In our case it was very unlucky again. I think we didn’t have the pace. It was a bad weekend. No doubt about that. We cannot hide our performance, but also we cannot hide that we’ve been very unlucky. We started with a hard tyre just to go very end and have an alternative strategy.
“There is a red flag, so we have to fit the medium and do 78 laps with the medium, which is a kamikaze strategy, but it was the only way to try to score some points,” summed up Alonso, as it became the second consecutive round where he failed to a score point. His teammate’s slight barrier touch was enough to derail Aston Martin’s afternoon.
“I think we always expected the race to be about managing the tyres so that was no surprise, especially after the restart,” said Stroll. “You need a big delta to overtake here so we did what we could with the strategy. I had a gap over Pierre so we pitted for Hard tyres to try and race him in the second half of the grand prix.
“It would have been difficult still to get past Gasly but it was a shame that my race kind of ended after the puncture. We don’t seem to be super competitive right now, we have to sort some stuff out and find some pace in the car,” summed up Stroll.
Here’s how F1 Monaco GP panned out
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