Fernando Alonso left unhappy with strategy decision in F1 British GP, while Lance Stroll terms it as sh*t car to drive – despite points for both.
It looked good for Aston Martin’s Alonso at the start after couple of drivers pitted for slick tyres in F1 British GP. He gained places and tucked himself in a good spot. But an early first stop dropped him down the order, even behind teammate Stroll which irked the Spaniard.
On the radio, he showed his displeasure by stating that the team gets it right with Stroll most of the time, but not him. He never gained those places back in the course of the grand prix. In fact, he stopped early again for the last time when they changed to slicks.
He managed to climb back up to eighth but was overtaken by Alexander Albon on the final lap to be ninth. Had the team mirrored him with Stroll’s strategy, there was a chance that the Spaniard would have been in the podium fight against Nico Hulkenberg and Lewis Hamilton.
“It was a very hard race to execute, and for us, it ended up being a missed opportunity,” said Alonso to TV media. “I’m not happy, obviously. We started seventh and finished ninth – we executed something badly. Usually in these kinds of situations, his [Stroll] side of the garage tends to be more accurate. They did well. In fact, Lance pitted twice before I even made my first stop, which put him up in third.
“That’s why sometimes I find it hard to understand, because we have another car giving us information, and if that car is in third place, I don’t know how we can’t use that information from our side of the garage. It’s in-house. I have the experience, but I don’t have the data. When they call me to pit, I pit. I can feed back the track conditions, but I cannot do much more than that.
“Whoever says that the driver makes the decisions in these conditions and wins the races, it’s bullshit. This is just a data-driven race with all the parameters we have in the car. I think the first stop was difficult to read, I understand that. I think Hamilton, Russell, Gasly, Carlos, myself, we all stopped on one lap. Obviously, we were P5, P6, P7, so it’s very difficult to gamble in that moment of the race.
“But we exited behind Esteban, Lance, Nico, a lot of cars that made a better call on the first stop. And then the second stop… I was the first one to pit for dry. The team thought that the inter tyre was losing temperature on the surface and it was the moment to pit. And I lost like 25 seconds again, so yeah, it was frustrating,” summed up Alonso.
His teammate Stroll finished seventh after starting from 17th. He gained most of the places by stopping at a time when it ended being the perfect laps to stop. He too lost a place to Pierre Gasly in the dying stages after losing out to Max Verstappen few laps before that.
He had a strange response on radio to his race engineer when he said, ‘crazy car to drive’. Stroll was quite explicit in terming the car as sh*t pretty much. “Yeah ‘crazy’ is an understatement, I mean it’s the worst piece of sh*t I have ever driven in my life to be honest. But it’s ok. seventh,” he said.
On the grand prix, he added: “Very mixed weekend for us at Silverstone – we showed some decent pace during Practice on Friday, which unfortunately we couldn’t build on during Qualifying and started from the back today. The team made some good strategy calls during the race and overall, a good result.
“I really struggled with tyre degradation and unfortunately we weren’t in a position where we could fight for more. Hulkenberg had a lot more grip during that last stint and with the level of degradation we got the best possible result today.”
Here’s how F1 British GP panned out
