With his 44th birthday now just a few weeks away Fernando Alonso’s 2025 Formula 1 season continues to gather momentum, and at Silverstone – helped by a little misfortune ahead – he starts an impressive P7.
Bad luck and a tricky car saw the Aston Martin driver fail to score any points in the first eight races, but he’s made up for that with ninth, seventh and seventh over the last three events.
Upgrades first seen at Imola helped, and there was a further round of new parts for Alonso at Silverstone on Friday. Not able to do a personal back-to-back – Lance Stroll still had the old bits for FP1 – he wasn’t quite sure of what direction to take for Saturday.
The team eventually stuck with the new package for both cars, but its true potential was unclear in FP3 as neither driver got in a lap on soft tyres, and they were unrepresentative 17th and 19th.
However from the start of qualifying Alonso was on it, taking P5 in Q1, P7 in Q2 and then P9 in Q3. He had a bit of good fortune in that the two cars immediately ahead were penalised, gifting him two places, but getting it right and avoiding sanctions is all part of the game.
“Upgrades were tested yesterday with a slight advantage to the new package, but small,” he said when I asked him about the choice to stick with the new parts.
“So it took a little bit of time to really analyse the data and see the differences. So yeah, obviously, a small step into the right direction, we take it for sure. But we thought the upgrades that everyone brought here seems that you level yourself, you don’t, you don’t make a bigger step forward. And yeah, in qualifying it’s what we saw.
“A Haas in Q3 quite strong in front of us, even Alpine into Q3, so we still need to work hard every weekend.
“But happy with today. To be in Q3 was not that straightforward, especially after FP3 we missed the soft run with a red flag at the end, and we went into qualifying a little bit into the unknown in terms of setup, front flap etc, with the red tyre, because we didn’t manage to test this morning.
“So all in all, I think we executed well qualifying. And let’s see what we can do tomorrow.”
He added: “A very unique circuit, a lot of high-speed here. The car feels good in the high-speed. So I don’t know if it’s the updated package – I only tested the new package. It was only Lance testing the old car yesterday, so I felt good the car all weekend. So it’s a positive step, for sure.”
The AMR25 has been a difficult car, seemingly unresponsive to setup changes at times. The good news is that upgrades have worked, which hasn’t always been the case in the recent past.
“Absolutely,” said Alonso. “I think what we brought so far to the track seems to work and deliver the expectations, even sometimes a little bit more than expected, sometimes a little bit less than expected.”
“Maybe the Imola upgrade was more than expected, and this one, at the moment less, but still to be optimised the setup. And always, when you bring a package, there is always a different ride height window where the package operates.
“There are always maybe some tweaks in the suspension, going softer, stiffer and things like that. So I think the next races we will see a more performing package.”
Alonso has a Mercedes and a Red Bull behind him, so hanging on to seventh over a race distance is not realistic, and he may have others to fend off as well. However there could be some rain, and then it will be about making the right calls at the right time.
“Let’s see. I think Williams are fast, faster than what they show lately. So I think they will be a threat. Tsunoda starting P11, I think he’s going to be a threat as well. And Kimi.
“I think it’s going to be a long race. We cannot underestimate the challenges that we will face tomorrow, but yesterday in the long run, car felt good, tyres felt good as well. So no concerns there. And let’s see if we can score points.”
Regarding the uncertain weather he said: “I would prefer rain, probably, drops of rain in the middle of the race that will spice things in the race. We know that on a dry, normal race, we will finish eighth, ninth or 10th.
“At the best, with some drop of rain, you can be in the top five, or you can be P15, but I think we take that risk at the moment. We have nothing to lose…”
Adam Cooper F1 