Alonso angered by Aston Martin’s strategy calls during F1 British GP

Fernando Alonso was angry that Aston Martin opted against giving him the same strategy as team-mate Lance Stroll during the Formula 1 British Grand Prix.

The double F1 world champion dropped two places to finish ninth at Silverstone, while Stroll climbed from 17th to seventh in the changeable conditions.

Stroll was even third at one point, having benefited from two perfectly timed early pitstops. He made his first under virtual safety car conditions on lap six, climbed into the top 10 on his soft rubber against others on intermediates, then pitted again for the green-striped tyres on lap 10 when rain resurfaced.

This allowed him to jump into the podium positions, as there were drivers on older intermediates who pitted later, including Alonso on lap 11 – which dropped him from sixth to 10th.

Alonso’s second stop came on lap 37, making him the first driver to switch to slicks late on but that move came a few tours too early as the bulk of the field, including Stroll, did not come in again until laps 41-44 of 52.

“It was a very hard race to execute, and for us, it ended up being a missed opportunity,” Alonso told DAZN, having just witnessed Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg claim a maiden podium.

“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.”

It left the 43-year-old with a “bitter taste” as it is during mixed-weather conditions that drivers rely on their teams the most.

“I have the experience, but I don’t have the data,” said Alonso. “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 [Lewis] Hamilton, [George] Russell, [Pierre] Gasly, Carlos [Sainz], 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 [Ocon], 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.”

But Aston Martin boss Andy Cowell has denied there being a strategy issue with Alonso’s side of the garage, as pre-race the vastly different starting positions offered the potential for varying strategies.

“I don’t think there’s a problem,” said Cowell. “The strategy is done centrally because there’s only one pit box.

“So you need to make sure that you consider it from a team perspective. Early on it felt really clear when to do the stop.

“Intermediates [were] progressively wearing out and the track was getting drier and drier. I think listening to the radio conversation with all the teams, everybody was thinking, ‘we should be stopping, we should be stopping. Now is the time to go’.

“We went early with Fernando. With hindsight, too early. But we very nearly stopped both cars that same lap.”

It is only now in hindsight that Cowell feels it “would have been better” for Alonso to mimic Stroll’s strategy.

Nevertheless, the Silverstone weekend leaves Aston Martin eighth in the constructors’ championship, with Stroll and Alonso respectively 12th and 14th in the drivers’ standings.