Fernando Alonso was left with mixed feelings in the wake of the Las Vegas Grand Prix after coming home 11th, overtaken late on by the Red Bull of Sergio Perez who grabbed the final point on offer.
The fact that Alonso was even competing for P10 was surprising, given Aston Martin’s relative lack of pace up until the race itself. He started down in 16th after a disappointing qualifying, and his gamble on the soft tyre didn’t pay off when no early Safety Car appeared.
But the Spaniard persevered, running two long stints on the hard tyre to climb back up the order – and he might have held off Perez late on were it not for the Mexican’s tyre offset.
“We were in the points until three or four laps from the end so yeah, a little bit sad now,” Alonso admitted afterwards.
Alonso was in the thick of the action all race long
“Probably we deserve it today, we did a very good race starting from the back, the pace was good, the car was in a happier place. Obviously, now I just want to jump in again and go again in Qatar and try and have some revenge there but yeah, on the positive side today the car was competitive and we were in the mix so a good way to finish the weekend.”
Alonso was at a loss to explain why the car felt so much better in race trim than it had all weekend, as Aston Martin extended their run without scoring to four races. But he did at least sound more confident heading into the final two weekends of the season.
READ MORE: Gasly says Las Vegas retirement after stunning P3 in qualifying ‘a tough one to take’
“The best session of the weekend was the race, the free practice and qualifying we were a little bit lost in the set-up and the grid level, but today the car was better – maybe the fuel load settled things,” he added.
“But now, right after removing the helmet, it’s a little bit frustrating but we go into the next two races with a little bit more optimism.”
Stroll had a race to forget in Vegas after a communication problem cost him team radio for most of the evening
That’s more optimism than team mate Lance Stroll could muster following events in Las Vegas as the Canadian lost his race radio on the first lap, and thus couldn’t communicate with the team as to how his tyres were doing, whether he should push or if he needed to lift and coast. That ultimately proved costly when he did eventually pit, to find the team weren’t ready for him.
That cost the Aston Martin man a lot of time, dropped him to the rear of the field and from there he could only recover to P15.
“No radio the whole race, I lost the radio the first lap so I was trying to give them some indication I was coming in but that didn’t happen properly so that ended my race,” Stroll said.
“We’d planned to stay on the medium tyre for slightly longer at the start of the race, but I could feel it dropping off quickly and wanted to get on the hard tyre. I just couldn’t get that message through to the pit wall. It meant that, when I did come in, the team wasn’t prepared for the stop and so it cost us about 20 seconds.”
RACE TICKETS – QATAR
Don’t miss your chance to be at the next Grand Prix and experience F1 in the desert setting of Lusail…