Complicated qualifications for Fernando Alonso

It’s a complicated start to the weekend for Aston Martin and Fernando Alonso. His teammate, Lance Stroll, could not achieve better than the 18th fastest time in Q1, which means elimination. Meanwhile, the Spaniard finished the first session with the 10th fastest time, but only managed the 13th best time in Q2. During the qualifications, Alonso also had a spin, without any impact.

The double world champion has stated that he lacks confidence in his car. He also lost grip with his car on multiple occasions between Friday and Saturday. “It’s very difficult,” admitted Alonso in the columns of AutoSport. “Yesterday, I lost the car in high-speed corners and today it was on the kerbs. It seems that we are always on the limit in terms of grip. And we have been slow in all sessions. So it’s not just a bad qualification. We have struggled all weekend, so it’s complicated. We all need to work together to find our best level, which is obviously not the one we are showing currently.”

Alonso not confident in the AMR23.

Fernando Alonso believes that the problem is not just with the AMR23. He is disappointed with his own performances and his lack of pace at the start of the weekend in Mexico. This weekend has been particularly tough for me, he said. I don’t know, maybe Lance was a bit more confident this weekend, but not me. I wasn’t doing a good job, I always felt struggling, and I didn’t trust the car. And, a big high-speed spin yesterday could have ended up in the wall or something else. So I wasn’t at my best either. So we all need to improve.

The disappointment among the Green team is even greater because they had made improvements to both of their vehicles. However, Alonso believes that it is important to remain focused on the positive aspects that were observed in Austin. “We also had the race in Austin, which we used as a comparison between the two packages,” he said. “And the results were clearly in favor of the new package. There is no concern about that, but it seems like we don’t have much confidence in the car right now. When driving, we can’t extract the maximum potential from it, and that penalizes us a lot. On this track, we’re losing between one and two tenths of a second in every corner. It’s not just in one sector that we’re lacking. Now, the lap time is simply slower. We need to find more performance. As I said, everyone is trying their best. So I remain confident that we will show better performances by Abu Dhabi.”

The team remains confident.

Despite complicated qualifications, Fernando Alonso still believes that Sunday’s race can smile upon Aston Martin. We scored points in Austin starting from the pit lane, so I hope we can still score points starting from the grid. I think the temperatures and following other cars are always a big penalty here in Mexico, due to the temperatures and stuff like that. So it will be difficult for everyone. It’s a race to see the checkered flag, and we’ll see what happens at the front as well. We have experimented a lot with the car recently. In Austin, we had a perfect opportunity, starting from the pit lane, to really experiment even more. We’ve had three sessions here. So I don’t think it’s only the setup. It’s more related to the package and us, the drivers, feeling a little more confident.