Alonso thought he had finished 10th at the Monaco Grand Prix
Aston Martin caused confusion for its driver, Fernando Alonso, who thought he'd scored a point at the Monaco Grand Prix, until he was told he'd finished 11th across the line.
The Aston Martin driver spent much of the race playing the team game, building a gap for Lance Stroll, which the Canadian could then use to get rid of his medium tyres and maintain his position.
When Stroll suffered a puncture after hitting his left rear tire at the entrance to Nouvelle Chicane, the Spaniard believed he needed to secure a point for the team. This led him to successfully defend against Daniel Ricciardo, despite worn medium tires that he had managed to keep until the end of the race. However, he was disappointed when he discovered that he would not be rewarded for his efforts.
« I was confused because when we [built a gap] and Lance was in front of me after the pit stops, they said: okay, we have secured 10th place. We did all this for that last point », explained Alonso.
« Then Lance had a puncture, I said: Oh, now I have all the responsibility on my shoulders with very worn tires to bring this point home. I was driving for 50 laps thinking I was 10th. And then, when I crossed the line and they told me P11, I was like: Oh, so, uh, all this stress for nothing. But anyway, it kept me alive. »
« I don’t know [why it happened]. When the red flag came out, Lance was P10, I was P12. And then at one point, they put Sainz back in P3, so we were 12th and 14th, we should have been 13th and 14th, but Lance was in front of Daniel, which he wasn’t supposed to be. »
No points for Aston Martin in Monaco.
« I therefore do not know what position I started in, and I do not know what position I was driving in. » Alonso felt that the nature of the race, which effectively cut off the pit stop strategy due to the early stop for the first lap incident, should reignite the debate on changing tires under a red flag.
He considered that this had deprived the race of its only point of interest, and that continuing to the end with the medium tires was a risk that ultimately did not pay off. When there is a red flag and you change tires and go to the end, the only point of interest in a Monaco race is the pit stops you have to make. If you remove this excitement from a pit stop, it becomes uninteresting.
« In our case, it was very unlucky once again. I think we didn’t have the pace. It was a bad weekend, without a doubt. We can’t hide our performance, but we also can’t hide that we were very unlucky.
We started with a hard tire just to make it to the end and have an alternative strategy. There is a red flag, so we have to switch to mediums and do 78 laps with the mediums, which is a kamikaze strategy, but it was the only way to try to score points.
