Fernando Alonso, with a brilliant response to the complaints against his team: "You have thrown me to the lions"

The day before he had predicted that it was not the ideal layout for Aston Martin, but the engine, turbo, MGU-K and MGU-H updates offered good results for Fernando Alonso in Suzuka. The eighth place at the finish line left the Asturian satisfied, the protagonist of an excellent start and eighth at the finish line after a Sunday where his AMR23 performed “better than expected”. However, the two-time world champion was quite critical of the strategy of his engineers, who were more attentive to Yuki Tsunoda than to the podium candidates..

“I think they called me too soon, to cover Yuki. Maybe today our race was not with him, but with Ferrari and Mercedes,” analyzed the fourth place finisher in the World Championship.. In fact, during one of the moments in which he was able to squeeze out the undercut, Alonso went one second faster per lap than Lando Norris, second at the finish line.. And in the final stretch, even though after Lance Stroll's retirement he had been warned to avoid the slopes, he lapped around 1:37, a pace only within the reach of Max Verstappen..

Aston Martin's strategy followed the first of the projections advanced by Pirelli before the traffic light went out: soft – hard – hard. “I think that after our first stop, unlike McLaren and Ferrari, having another two stints with the hard ones, we surely could have finished sixth or seventh,” warned Fernando, who also had George Russell's Mercedes under his radar..

“A difficult spiral”

Without wanting to get into controversy, Mike Krack praised the consistent driving of his leader, who had “taken home” four “very useful” points.. “Realistically, taking into account our overall performance throughout the weekend, we have achieved the best result with Fernando,” argued the main team of the Silverstone team.

The truth is that Alonso's discomfort with his engineers had already been evident in the middle of his career.. “You have thrown me to the lions by stopping so soon. Incredible,” lamented the man from Oviedo on the radio.. A few minutes later, his complaints focused on the top speed of his car: “They leave me behind on the straights.”. Think something!” According to official F1 measurements, Alonso was fifteenth in the first sector (277 km/h), sixteenth in the second sector (302 km/h) and thirteenth at the finish line (260 km/h ).

That deficit still stung Alonso when he spoke to the press in the Sukuza mixed zone. “We got into a difficult spiral, with a lot of traffic, to which we must add our lack of top speed. Even when we open our DRS the car in front escapes us. So when we encounter traffic the race becomes quite complicated,” he analyzed..

Even with a 24-point margin over Carlos Sainz in the World Championship, Alonso will have to maintain his form in the remaining six races, where perhaps Alpine will also join the fight. Relegated to the fight for the middle zone, one of the factors that can make the difference will be the skill in the exits. Like this Sunday in Sukuza, when before the first corner he took advantage of a touch between Sergio Pérez and Lewis Hamilton to gain four places with the soft tires. “It wasn't bad,” he joked on the radio.

“The start, from tenth to sixth, was obviously very good,” the Asturian later acknowledged. Just a month ago, during the Belgian GP, Alonso went from fifth to third on the grid with astonishing ease. And on July 9, he also gained two places at the start of the British GP.