The Aston Martin disaster in Austin: Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, in the pit of the grill

Throughout the 17 classifications of 2023, Fernando Alonso had slipped, without exception and with astonishing regularity, into the top-10. A milestone not even within the reach of Max Verstappen or the Ferraris, always fearsome at a lap. However, the situation changed dramatically in Austin, where the Asturian was eliminated in Q1, so on Sunday he will start seventeenth on the grid.. Lance Stroll, penultimate, confirmed the terrible moment of Aston Martin, relegated precisely when it presented its brand new package of improvements.

No team can aspire to the podium at the Circuit of the Americas without aerodynamic efficiency, so the evolutions in the AMR-23 affected the diffuser, the sidepods, the flat bottom and the famous beam wing, a key piece for the performance of the rear wing.. You also don't get very far without a car that can handle the curves, which are very varied and demanding.. Fine-tuning the configuration on an asphalt at more than 42ºC, bumpy and prone to porpoising, was a challenge for the Silverstone team..

What no one expected in the green garage was that the brakes would ruin the option of examining his car during the only free session.. “We suffered a small overheating problem on the left front and had to put our cars in when we discovered a fire through the on-board cameras,” confirmed Mike Krack, team principal.. Alonso couldn't even test the soft compound during the morning and when he finally rode them, during Q1, his 1:36.8 left engineers and mechanics looking very bad..

Waiting for the miracle

They must have known something in there, because while the competition improved their records, the two-time champion couldn't even extract decent speed with his second set of soft tires (1:36.268). It is true that the deficit against Daniel Ricciardo, which marked the elimination, was only 55 thousandths. As true as that Alonso could only surpass Lance Stroll, his teammate, and the Williams of Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant.

The only message from Aston Martin's radio leaked by the FIA was a warning for the Asturian to remain in the car waiting for an infringement from a rival.. There was no miracle, of course, and the desolate scenes in the box did not need any emphasis either.. Even more concise was the communication between Alonso and his track engineer: “Sorry, friend, we're out,” to which the man from Oviedo replied with a simple “Received.”.

“It's very painful, but we will use this weekend as a test for next season,” commented the 14th in the COTA mixed zone, without excuses for his calamitous result.. “We didn't know how the car worked, because in the morning I was only able to complete six or seven laps with the new aero package.. So we came into qualifying blind,” he admitted.

And he would have had reasons to feel angry, since before his last attempt he was sent to the track too late.. A delay that already compromised the previous lap, where he could not warm up the tires in the best way. In fact, he crossed the finish line with just over a second to spare.. An accumulation of inconveniences that made the debacle inevitable. Since the 2022 Spanish GP, after a mix-up with the Alpine wall, Alonso has not crashed in Q1.

Verstappen pushes the limits

Now that two months have passed since that heroic podium in Zandvoort, where he performed well above the vehicle, Fernando's situation continues to blur in a bad way.. Since the holidays, his car has stalled in an alarming way. Not only has it lost track of Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren, but now it is surprised by Alpine, Alfa Romeo and Haas.

On this occasion, the power of the SF-23 was evident thanks to Charles Leclerc, who gave the Scuderia its fifth pole of the year (1:34.723), ahead of Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton. A year after leading the grid on this track, Carlos Sainz had to settle for fourth place, 22 hundredths behind the Monegasque.

The tension in Q3 increased when the stewards erased Verstappen's time for exceeding the white line at turn 19, which had allowed him to beat Leclerc by five thousandths.. On Sunday, the three-time champion will start sixth, in the wake of George Russell, although no one in their right mind should take away his status as the main candidate for victory.