2025 Aston Martin | Aramco F1 Team

[Bisonas]

it was a race of many "what ifs"

Frustration for many of us is logical as it is logical for Alonso himself to question some decisions.

My opinion is that AMR took a gamble with Stroll putting him on slicks that just paid out. It was a gamble because when you know rain is coming hard in a few laps, you have to time your in lap for inters perfectly. If it rains suddenly and heavily (as it did today) and catches you with slicks in the wrong part of the circuit it can put you out of the race. It was a risk that weren’t comfortable to take with Alonso and a risk that usually take with the car that has less to lose.

From the moment that they put stroll on slicks and knowing that rain is coming soon, it was also easy to assume that Stroll was going to pit first for inters as it was the driver with the biggest risk to be caught in heavy rain with slicks.

What I can not understand is why they don’t communicate with Alonso his options. They always ask him, what he feels like doing, or what he thinks, but they didn’t give him options today. Before the rain started coming heavily, they were discussing about possible scenarios and Alonso told them the obvious. He told them that they are the ones that know what the weather is going to do, and that they have all the weather data and the data of others running with slicks etc. It was like telling them, look guys you have all the data, decide the best strategy, and tell me. It’s not the first time Alonso has to point out the obvious to the team in changing conditions like today.

When rain started coming down heavily, again they where completely undecided. They kept asking Alonso if he can keep the car in the track or not with those warn inters, or what he thinks they should do. At some point Alonso did tell them to box when he was asked and they boxed.

And there is where AMR is at fault. When you have changing conditions like today, in a track that you have both multiple slick runners and inter runners they should have the last call for when to pit, or at least provide your drivers with strategy options to choose from.
I think AMR lacks a bit on that department.

Today it was just unfortunate for Alonso how things played out.

The race left us with 2 what ifs. What if Alonso had taken the gamble with slicks early on like stroll, and 2nd what if Alonso had putted his mediums 2 laps later than he did, because for me if he had putted the mediums just 2 laps later, the outcome I think would be quite different for him.
Anyway, it is, what it is.

It was never an option to pit Alonso early on and put him on slicks. It would be suicide for Alonso to give up 8 positions to put on slicks. 99 times out of 100, that's the wrong play. Who in their right mind would have pitted from Alonso from 6th to come out 14th?

Like I said, it was only an option for Lance because AntMan was on slicks and was close to 30 seconds behind Lance. This allowed Lance to pit, still come out ahead of Antman, in clean air and therfore not have to pass anyone.

Stroll pitted under VSC and the moment he pitted was 15.8s behind the leader in 11th position.
(Alonso was 8.3s behind the leader in 6th at that time)

Stroll came out of the pits, 28.2s behind the leader in 12th position while the race was still under VSC.
He lost approximately 12.4s to the leader while pitting under VSC.

Now if we add those 12.4s to ALO 8.3s gap to the leader, ALO would have come out more or less around 20.7s behind the leader. That would have putted him very very comfortably in the same gap/slot Stroll ended up, at 12th position, 3,5s behind Ocon and he would have been at an even better position because he would have been 7-8 seconds closer to the leader compare to where Stroll came out.

Now 3 laps later Stroll came in for inters while he was just 17.8s from the leader (piastri now) at 8th position having gained massively in his 3 laps on soft. Especially in S2 he was gaining enormously on ALL the inters runners.

After (the leader) PIA and VES at 2nd place pitted for fresh inters, VES at second place was 9s from the lead and stroll was 15s from the lead.

I don't want to shock you but all my calculations/emulations show me, that if Alonso was given Strolls exact strategy and the exact same pit stop timings, after everybody was pitted for inters, ALO would have been running at 2nd place behind PIA and in front of VES.

of course ALO presence in that scenario probably would have triggered VES and NOR to think about how to cover ALO strategy, and maybe, who knows we had a completely different sequence of events.

I urge everyone to run the numbers on live timing to verify what i am saying.

So yea, it was pretty much an option for ALO also to pit for slicks, but as i have stated in my previous post, it was a riskier option for Alonso because he had more to lose if they didn't manage to get the pitstops timings correctly.

Kudos to them though because regarding Stroll they did manage to execute a very difficult (to get it 100% right) strategy, with perfection.

[Nikosar]

Stroll's post-race interview lasted over a minute, a true miracle! Must be part of the team's latest upgrade package.

On a more serious note, he pointed to tyre degradation as the main issue today. Interestingly, track temperatures weren’t especially high, so if degradation is already a problem now, it could get a lot worse at hotter venues...

Despite cooler, wet conditions does suggest it's more about the car or setup than the weather. I hope it is just the car setup not the new upgrade.

[zoroastar]

@zeroastar to what end? They are struggling to get points as it is. Why would they risk points and risk finishing further back in the standings by favoring Lance?

The fact is that Alonso is always further up the stack. They will always go with a more conservative strategy with him. Lance , who is often starting out of the points, has nothing to lose by trying a risky strategy.

to the end of concentrating on helping lances race and not spending the energy to do the same for alonso. i wouldnt go so far as to say that they are sabotaging alonso, but i think they are bending over backwards to give lance better PR. with that it carries over to the track. thats my feeling at least. no workforce is completely immune from kissing ass of the boss, especially the ones that have to deal with him directly haha

[zoroastar]

time for Alonso to vacate AMR garage.....

that would be the dumbest thing he could do dude are you serious? i can see the headlines now "Alonso finally works with Newey and decides to drive for alpine instead. Tops all of his other bad decisions with the cherry on top" if people look at this race, they followed all the top drivers in their strategy, and simply werent fast enough to pull it off

it wasnt sabotage, it was laziness.

[diffuser]

@zeroastar to what end? They are struggling to get points as it is. Why would they risk points and risk finishing further back in the standings by favoring Lance?

The fact is that Alonso is always further up the stack. They will always go with a more conservative strategy with him. Lance , who is often starting out of the points, has nothing to lose by trying a risky strategy.

to the end of concentrating on helping lances race and not spending the energy to do the same for alonso. i wouldnt go so far as to say that they are sabotaging alonso, but i think they are bending over backwards to give lance better PR. with that it carries over to the track. thats my feeling at least. no workforce is completely immune from kissing ass of the boss, especially the ones that have to deal with him directly haha

Hahaha he can use all the help he can get.

[selvam_e2002]

time for Alonso to vacate AMR garage.....

On what grounds? His age or?

no support from team. the golden boy Stroll will get privileges once car is capable of winning.

[collindsilva]

There is some issues with the chassis or suspension which makes the car eat the tires. Compare the same to Alpine, they are using the 2 year old chassis and still Gasly was fast, the alpine had no major upgrade this season. We ned to live with the problem for this season. Maybe the upgrades need to be dialled in more for better race pace.
The next race is after 3 weeks, hopefully we will have a better understanding by then..

[-wkst-]

Alo says on post race interview that the other side of the box usually gets the strategy right. He also says that, given the team had the information of Str car, he would like that info to be shared to him since they're the same team. And several other spicy things.

Guys, I don't know, for me that sentences are very representative. Maybe they're because of the frustration of such an unlucky race, but he seemed calmed chatting with DLR, Melissa and Schlaffer.

They had plenty of data showing that Stroll was going faster on the inters, who pitted two laps prior, but never relayed that information to Alonso or factored that into a decision when the rain increased.

ALO and all others on the inters (except HUL) pitted the lap after STR and the slick runners, they wasted no time.

[Ashwinv16]

Stroll's post-race interview lasted over a minute, a true miracle! Must be part of the team's latest upgrade package.

On a more serious note, he pointed to tyre degradation as the main issue today. Interestingly, track temperatures weren’t especially high, so if degradation is already a problem now, it could get a lot worse at hotter venues...

Despite cooler, wet conditions does suggest it's more about the car or setup than the weather. I hope it is just the car setup not the new upgrade.

Silverstone is a very aggressive track on tyres and upgrades while okay they took a wrong turn in the set up but tyre degradation has been a problem for some time. There is a final bit of fix coming to Belgium for low speed corners so let's see. I think they could ahve gone with a bit more downforce. Considering the pace they had. The other problem is Sauber is now the 2nd best car on its tyres, behind the Mclaren so that's an issue as well.

[TyreSlip]

Alo says on post race interview that the other side of the box usually gets the strategy right. He also says that, given the team had the information of Str car, he would like that info to be shared to him since they're the same team. And several other spicy things.

Guys, I don't know, for me that sentences are very representative. Maybe they're because of the frustration of such an unlucky race, but he seemed calmed chatting with DLR, Melissa and Schlaffer.

They had plenty of data showing that Stroll was going faster on the inters, who pitted two laps prior, but never relayed that information to Alonso or factored that into a decision when the rain increased.

ALO and all others on the inters (except HUL) pitted the lap after STR and the slick runners, they wasted no time.

Intentionally cherry picking a part of my response out of context. Nice.

[-wkst-]

That's absolutely no cherry picking out of context and you know that, I just corrected your wrong posting about what happend yesterday in the phase of the increased rain.

ALO/team decided to pit for inters when STR was about to complete S2 of his first inter lap..

It's simply untrue what you posted and makes your statement of not giving ALO this informations or not using the informations for a quicker pit stop redundant.

[TyreSlip]

That's absolutely no cherry picking out of context and you know that, I just corrected your wrong posting about what happend yesterday in the phase of the increased rain.

ALO/team decided to pit for inters when STR was about to complete S2 of his first inter lap..

It's simply untrue what you posted and makes your statement of not giving ALO this informations or not using the informations for a quicker pit stop redundant.

The part you intetionally left out...

"It reminds me of Monaco 2023 when the team was indecisive on whether to put Alonso on inters or mediums. They had plenty of data showing that Stroll was going faster on the inters, who pitted two laps prior, but never relayed that information to Alonso or factored that into a decision when the rain increased."

I was referencing 2023 at Monaco in that paragraph and you know it. Quit arguing in bad faith.

[Bisonas]

That's absolutely no cherry picking out of context and you know that, I just corrected your wrong posting about what happend yesterday in the phase of the increased rain.

ALO/team decided to pit for inters when STR was about to complete S2 of his first inter lap..

It's simply untrue what you posted and makes your statement of not giving ALO this informations or not using the informations for a quicker pit stop redundant.

The part you intetionally left out...

"It reminds me of Monaco 2023 when the team was indecisive on whether to put Alonso on inters or mediums. They had plenty of data showing that Stroll was going faster on the inters, who pitted two laps prior, but never relayed that information to Alonso or factored that into a decision when the rain increased."

I was referencing 2023 at Monaco in that paragraph and you know it. Quit arguing in bad faith.

2023 Monaco tyres selection was a really Bad Call that emulations/calculations showed that it probably cost them the victory.

I don't personally think yesterday was a bad call like Monaco 2023.
Yesterday for me it was just a case of, giving a risky strategy to the car that has less to lose.
A lot could have gone wrong on stroll strategy that could have compromise him or even put him out of the race if heavy rain had caught him on slicks in the wrong part of the circuit. IMO It was a risk that they decide not to take with Alonso who was running in a better position at that time.

At the end they managed to execute stroll strategy with perfection, and that brought out the frustration to Alonso and to some of us.

Teams most of the time will try something out of the ordinary and will take risks with the driver that has less to lose. That is normal in F1. Some times can go bad, but some times can work in favor of that driver. yesterday was just one of those days that the risk they took worked wonders for Stroll.

In hindsight as i explained in detail in previous post, Calculations/emualations shows that if Alonso was given the stroll strategy at the same pitstop timings, Alonso, after everyone had pitted for new inters, would be running in 2n place, behind PIA and in front of VES, or at least may had triggered a completely different sequence of events because in that scenario Mclaren and redbull may have taken some actions to try to cover ALO strategy. My guess is that he would be running 2nd just before the Full Safety car, as Mclaren and Redbull would probably do nothing about him at that point. It would be very risky for them to try and react to what Alonso was doing at that stage.

[TLof]

Stroll's pit stop was a gamble and it paid off. That's the advantage of being nowhere, and in conditions like this it's sometimes an advantage, as we've seen. What was completely unnecessary was the early stop for the slicks. And I think they used Alonso to get feedback on what they should do with Stroll to secure a decent finish because his intermediates were completey cooked.

It's now half-time in the season and we can acknowledge that Alonso's overall strategy this season has been abysmal and has cost him a lot of points. It is what it is and they need to improve if they really want to be an ambitious team. Also the communication with his new engineer seems to be a bit off and the dynamics are not so good.

[-wkst-]

@tyreslip

My bad, I thought you were referring to yesterday.

When I remember correctly, can't find the team radios by now from Monaco, ALO discussed for quite a while there with his engineer what tyre to put on. Mainly decided of the duration of the rain. They thought it will be short and therefore the team decided that the medium is the right one. ALO expressed before his concern, if I remember correctly, that new rubber will be useful being on an old hard. STR was somewhere at the back as usual and could gamble like yesterday. But track position is everything in Monaco, so I don't blame neither the team nor the driver there to be hesitantly. In hindsight, ALO/team should have waited one more lap there, as the big rain came, like VER.

If anything was wrong yesterday from the team, it was the soft tyre for STR in the last stint, dead tyres, and that they should have waited for RUS as the guinea pig, while discussing with ALO the switch. Being super brave, switching from inters to slicks as the first one is hardly ever a good idea.


To add for yesterday:
"Terrible race, as usual" was the team radio from ALO after the race. Adrenaline, disappointment, etc., but sometimes it's better to say nothing. Especially after having a great race (driver and tactics) a week before.