Fernando Alonso’s failure to score a point over the opening eight rounds signalled how far his fortunes have changed at Aston Martin in the two years since he arrived at the team and immediately became a regular podium visitor.
Fernando Alonso
| Best | Worst | |
|---|---|---|
| GP start | 5 (x2) | 20 |
| GP finish | 5 | 17 |
| Points | 26 | |
During his point-less run there were occasions when the two-times world champion missed a chance to score. But for the most part this was a case of miserable luck.
Alonso pointed to the gravel thrown up by a rival as his reason for crashing out as the track dried in Melbourne. In Shanghai his brakes failed, and another technical failure seven races later in Monaco denied him his best points-scoring chance to that point, after he took a strong sixth on the grid.
In between those races he came in 11th on three occasions. That looked like the best result available at Suzuka, but in Jeddah he might have kept Hadjar behind. He made a net loss of six places to finish 11th at Imola (not pitting under a Virtual Safety Car didn’t help) but pulled off some creative passes approaching Piratella.
Points were possible in the sprint race at Miami but he was late to switch to slicks after the track dried, bringing him within range of Liam Lawson, who took him out.
Alonso finally got into his stride after Aston Martin brought a couple of tweaks for their car which allowed him to regularly reach Q3. After the frustration of Monaco, Spain started out looking like more of the same, Alonso going off at turn five. But a Safety Car deployment played into his hands, he salvaged ninth place and has only failed to score once since then.
He took seventh in the next two races in Canada and Austria, the latter a savvy gamble on a one-stop strategy combined with a millimetre-perfect defensive drive against Gabriel Bortoleto. He deserved better than ninth at Silverstone, where team mate Lance Stroll finished ahead of him after somewhat fortuitously landing on an ideal strategy in the rain-hit race.
The Aston Martins were nowhere at Spa, but Alonso went into the summer break on the back of his best result of the season so far, with fifth place at the Hungaroring.
Stroll has been around long enough that it’s no longer a surprise to see his team mates conclusively out-performing him. Alonso is clearly doing that at the moment, even if the points do not reflect it, though it’s debatable how much credit he is due for doing so. That, plus a few uncharacteristic errors, keep him in the lower half of our top 10 at this point.
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