Alonso ‘proud’ of Aston Martin after ‘better than expected’ P5 result in Imola Qualifying

Fernando Alonso was left feeling “proud” of the work done by the Aston Martin team after scoring a season-best grid slot of P5 in Qualifying for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, a result that the Spaniard conceded was “better than expected”.

On a weekend in which they have brought upgrades to their car, the British outfit displayed good pace throughout the session whilst also experimenting with a strategy that saw them complete both soft and medium tyre runs during each segment.

With the latter bolted on for their final flying laps after both Alonso and team mate Lance Stroll progressed to Q3, Alonso crossed the line in an impressive fifth, with Stroll not far behind in eighth place.

When it was put to him that he had probably not expected such a result earlier today, Alonso smiled: “No, I didn’t! I think it’s a little bit better than expected, both cars in Q3 and the car felt competitive, so let’s see tomorrow.

Alonso ‘proud’ of Aston Martin after ‘better than expected’ P5 result in Qualifying

“Definitely the new parts that we brought here, they’re performing well – we saw yesterday when we tested them and today’s the confirmation. At the same time we need to keep the feet on the ground – maybe Imola’s a good track for us and we need to wait for different tracks.

“But [I’m] happy for the team, proud of them. They’ve been working hard and this upgrade hopefully brings some motivation to the team.”

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Given the highly competitive battle currently playing out amongst the midfield, Alonso was also quizzed on whether trying something different – as the team did with the medium tyres strategy – was the way to make the difference.

“Yeah, let’s see tomorrow, because I think we were competitive also on the soft tyre,” the two-time World Champion answered. “We were doing one soft [run], one medium [run] in each Quali session.

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“Because of that we didn’t know which tyre was faster, so we opted to run both compounds in all the sessions – like this you cover all the alternatives, and I think on both runs we were always progressing through Qualifying, so I think we were generally fast today. We need to confirm tomorrow.”

Stroll, meanwhile, spoke positively about how the car performed with the C5 compound on, the Canadian reflecting after the session: “I think good decisions [were made with] putting the medium [on] today, which paid off, and the car felt like it was coming alive in Qualifying. We made the most of it.”

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And when pushed on how much of the performance might be down to the updates brought to the AMR25 at Imola, Stroll added: “Yeah, I think it was a bit of everything. I think we’ll get a better idea tomorrow in the race [on] how we really look with the upgrades, so we’ll see how it goes.”