Adam Cooper F1

Fernando Alonso says Aston Martin’s call to stop him only once in the Belgian GP was not planned – and it needed “a little bit of luck” to work.

Alonso was one of only five drivers to stop only once, along with original race winner George Russell, Yuki Tsunoda, Kevin Magnussen and his own team mate Lance Stroll.

Alonso used the unexpected strategy to finish ninth on the road, which became eighth when Russell was disqualified for a weight infringement.

At the previous race in Hungary he was left frustrated after what he thought was an unnecessarily early first stop as the team reacted to other soft tyre starters coming in.

“We had the plans, as always, Plan B, Plan C, whatever,” said Alonso. “So we covered the one-stop and the three-stops. We were P12, and we were just waiting for a safety car, maybe to play in our hands.

“And then 11 laps in the end, we started considering, ‘Okay, safety car is not coming, but maybe we go to the end?’

“So it was just being very flexible, and lap-by-lap, judging the conditions, and at the end, it was the right call. But let’s say it was not planned just to go for one-stop.”

Like Russell Alonso was able to make it work because degradation was not as bad as had been feared, and the tyres didn’t fall off a cliff.

“I think especially with the new asphalt, you sometimes get very low deg,” he said. “Or you get graining, you can have the two things. And today was one of those days. Maybe the temperature helped, to be a little bit hotter on Sunday.

“We had a lot of graining on Friday, and we didn’t have any today, but I think no one could predict even the last five laps. If the degradation was not linear, and you have a big cliff, the strategy will not work. It’s a little bit of luck sometimes when you take these decisions.”

Alonso conceded that having track position by staying out and obliging two-stoppers to catch him helped the strategy to work, while his choice of a higher downforce level – which protected the tyres from sliding – was also key.

“It depends to the cars you’re fighting,” he said of track position. “In our case it was crucial, because the Williams and the Alpines, they were the two fastest cars [on the straights], and if you fall behind, the race is over.

“So we underestimated a little bit that, but at the end our car thanks to the extra drag and downforce, maybe was taking care of the tyres a little bit better, and made it possible to do one-stop. So it was a trade-off, and I think it was the right call for us.”

Asked to review the first half of the season Alonso admitted that it hasn’t been what he had expected.

“A little bit disappointed,” he said. “We cannot hide the fact that we are fighting today, with Williams, RB and Alpine last year, we were looking maybe to the top four teams.

“Now they are out of reach, and we are just defending from the guys behind. Even at the beginning of the year in qualifying, especially, we were always top five, top six, in the mix.

“So definitely a lot of work to do for us in the summer break, and the second part of the year. We will not give up.”

Vowles is pretty confident that Williams will get the nod from Sainz

Williams Formula 1 boss James Vowles says “the odds are in our favour” in terms of the chances of signing Carlos Sainz for 2025 and beyond.

He also indicated that an announcement could come as early as next week, before the summer break, after he drew a “line in the sand” in terms of the decision process.

Sainz has been considering his options since Ferrari announced that he would be replaced by Lewis Hamilton in 2025, with Audi, Alpine and Williams the three choices that he had been considering in recent weeks.

Management changes at the first two, plus Alpine’s plan to use customer engines from 2026, have given him extra food for thought.

Vowles is convinced that Williams is now the favourite to land him.

“More than 50%, how’s that?,” he said when asked what the chances were of securing the Spaniard.

“How confident am I? I think the odds are in our favour, but I’ve been stung by this already once this year. So let’s see.”

Regarding the possibility of a driver announcement in the coming week he said: “Tentatively, yes. I think I’ve already said before, going into summer break, yes. And I think there’s a there’s a line in the sand that I’ve created, and I hope it’s one that we remain within.”

Vowles has long stressed that Sainz is the team’s number one target, with Valtteri Bottas the likely Plan B.

“I’m open minded, but I want excellence within the team,” he said. “I want race-winning performance within the team. I want individuals that are leaders. In other words, they’re established.

“So out of all those, the top of the list, I’ve said it from the start, I’ll maintain it here now as well, is Carlos.

“In adversity last year, he won a race, and he did it in a bloody intelligent way, against some of the best individuals, that includes Lando and Charles. He beat them in the circumstances.

“I know he had a pretty poor qualifying yesterday, but look at Q1 and Q2 he’s there or thereabouts. He brings excellence along with him. And I’ve said it once, and I keep saying it, that is where my heart is set, and let’s see if the journeys collide.”

Vowles stressed that he has worked hard to convince Sainz to come on board.

“It’s interesting conversations he and I have had pretty late into a few nights, and we present it from both sides,” he said.

“My perspective is this. I know I wear Williams shirt, but I believe so much in what we’re doing. That’s why I left Mercedes to come here.

“I believe in everything we are doing here, and I’m in it day-to-day, and I can see the changes day to day.

“With Carlos, he can’t see much of that. What he looks at is what you can see externally. Where are you, where have you qualified? Why did you have a bad race here? What’s going on here?”

Vowles admitted that Audi’s offer is tempting for Sainz: “He has one of the largest OEMs in the world chasing him. That’s hard to turn down, an OEM that his father has won with.

“At the same time, he has a team [Alpine] that has, let’s be clear about it, historically, beaten us, fundamentally, and again, that becomes hard to turn down. They won races not that long ago, or won a race not that long ago [Hungary 2021].

“But irrespective, I can see that perspective on things. Here’s what he told me, which actually resonated the most – ‘the reason why I’m doing this is when I commit, I need to commit with all my heart, and all my soul, 100% and to do that means I can’t have any doubts.’ And that’s why it’s taking the time. And that resonated with me a lot.”

Expanding on Sainz’s decision process he said: “He’s a very sensible chap. Whatever happens with Audi, they are an OEM, they’ll pour what is required financially into this to make it successful. 

“And I think change there? I’m not sure if it’s good or bad. I’m not enough in the team to be able to know it, but I don’t think that’s necessarily resonating.

“Remember, he’s looking at the long term, what’s the right long term solution, and with Alpine, they’ll take an amount of pain, and then they’ll have an amount of success from it as well.

“At the same time, I think he’s trying, as you all are as well, to weigh up what the options are. I’m biased.

“We’re a stable management here. We have no changes ongoing, and we have a hell of a lot of investment in the background. This is why, for me, it’s an easy decision for him.”

Gasly is running more downforce than Ocon at Spa

Alpine Formula 1 drivers Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly have gone in very different directions on downforce levels for the Belgian GP – and it didn’t work out as expected in Saturday’s wet qualifying.

As part of a general package of updates the Enstone team brought a new low drag wing to Spa.

It was tried for the first time in FP2, and while Ocon preferred to stick with it for qualifying and the race, Gasly went back to a high downforce version.

He should thus in theory have had the advantage in the wet qualifying session, and indeed he was an impressive second in Q1.

However he slipped back to 12^th in Q2 while Ocon progressed to Q3 and earned what became ninth place on the grid after Max Verstappen’s penalty was applied.

“A good afternoon for us,” said Ocon when asked by this writer about his session. “I think we optimised well the car potential today. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any new sets for Q3, which hurt us a little bit.

“We decided to stick on a dry setup, to have little bit more straight-line performance. That’s why we were very quick in sector one. And we decided to split across cars, which is never an easy decision as well. But to me, it was quite important, the race aspect of things.

“And if it’s dry tomorrow, touching wood, we can hopefully look ahead and have some good opportunity, more than looking behind, looking to fall back, really.

“On the dry it was clear that it was the better option. Obviously, on the wet, it should be quicker, the higher downforce. But yeah, today we’ve maximised the potential we had. And even with the light car in sector two, we were quite strong in general.”

Ocon noted that as qualifying went on he was able to understand how best to make use of his low-drag configuration.

“Pierre in Q1 was a good, four or five tenths quicker,” he said. “I kind of thought that’s how we are going to qualify, basically, it was quite clear.

“But somehow after a couple of runs I managed to figure out where I could gain from that low downforce and use the potential of it. And it turned out to work alright in the end.”

He added: “I think we were on the max downforce in Budapest, and we killed the tyres. So we go the other way.”

Meanwhile Gasly remains hopeful that his wing choice will prove beneficial in Sunday’s race.

“On my car we decided to go with more downforce,” he said. “So a different approach between the two cars. We’ll see if it pays off tomorrow in the race. But we’re quite confident that it matched what we expect in terms of gains with this new package.

“We know it can be a long race here. It’s going to be hot tomorrow. It was between the one and two stop before, and we seemed quite good on the tyre. So we’ll have to see what we can do.

“But I think we’re going to be in the fight for P10, P9 with these guys ahead of us. So that’s where our race will be.”

Gasly admitted that things went wrong for him as qualifying progressed and he had issues with tyre temperatures.

“Q1 was really good,” he said. “The car felt great, and the track obviously dried up a bit. And I just think we got it wrong with our out-laps, going faster in the out-laps, and my tyres were cooked every time in my push laps.

“So just from a very strong balance and potential in Q1 the car just felt very different in Q2. I’m doing the same lap time when the track’s drier, and it’s just quite disappointing because there was obviously good potential. But that’s the difference between a Q3 and Q2.”

Fernando Alonso believes that the Belgian GP will be a step “into the unknown” for all teams and drivers given the limited preparation time.

Having qualified ninth the Spaniard is hoping that a higher downforce level than some of Aston Martin’s immediate rivals will prove beneficial in terms of tyre usage during the race, due to less sliding.

Rain on Saturday meant that teams only had Friday to prepare for what is expected to be hot and dry race on Sunday, with a new track surface making it hard to judge how tyres will behave over the full distance.

“We go into the race into the unknown I think for everybody,” said Alonso. “We had a little bit of long runs yesterday, but in this track, being so long the lap, you cannot do more than six or seven laps, because of time restrictions on the sessions.

“So with the new asphalt, it’s very grippy, but we don’t know exactly the degradation tomorrow.

“The good thing is that with a wet qualifying, we have all the dry tyres available for everybody, so we should be able to push all the way through.”

Asked who his competition will be in the race he said: “Not the cars in front, unfortunately! But I think we will have to see behind us. It’s going to be a challenging race in terms of tyre degradation, some nice battles for sure.

“I think we have the Alpines very fast this weekend. We have, I think, Albon as well, very fast. So, yeah, I think that will be our battle.

“They are a little a bit quicker on the straights. We have a little bit more downforce in the car, maybe we take care better on the tyres. So hopefully that comes to us at the end of the race.”

Alonso, who will gain a place on the grid thanks to a PU penalty for Max Verstappen, believes that he couldn’t have done better in qualifying, indicating that it was the best he felt in the car all weekend.

“P9 behind the top four teams probably was the maximum today,” he said. “So happy with that. The car felt good in qualifying. I struggled a little bit the rest of the three practices this weekend. I was never confident in the car. I needed three or four laps to get the rhythm into the session.

“So finally now in qualifying I was flat out since lap 1, and yeah, that extra confidence, it was very important in these kinds of conditions.”

Regarding the latest updates he added: “We’ve been experimenting with the setup yesterday as well. So yeah, the new upgrades are a little bit more optimised.”

Alonso says that the AMR24 upgrades worked well in Hungary

Fernando Alonso says that his Aston Martin Formula 1 team is “a little bit more calm” after the upgrades introduced for the AMR24 worked successfully.

This season the Silverstone team has struggled to get performance out of the car, and earlier upgrades haven’t always worked as planned.

Despite the fact that the team came away from Budapest with only a humble 10^th place for Lance Stroll Alonso says that the new parts made a difference.

“I think we are quite happy with how the new package worked in Hungary,” he said. “It’s doing what the wind tunnel was saying.

“And we had a very good correlation, which was very important, after a few other upgrades were a little bit more up and down.

“So I think the team is quite happy with Budapest. Not forgetting that this is only the first step, and we are still long way off where we want to be.

“But now that it seems that we found a path, and we see on track what we see on the wind tunnel, maybe it’s easier for us to add downforce now, without any scare of not seeing it on track.”

Underlining that he now expects upgrades to work well from now on Alonso noted: “We are a little bit more calm after the Budapest upgrade in terms of what is coming for the future, or what will come in the future.

“Maybe the team has now a better understanding of where to put performance, with the safety that it will add lap time, and it will make the car faster. So this was a key upgrade for us, I think, and it worked as expected. So it gives us more confidence, for sure.”

Alonso says the progress made by rival teams has shown Aston Martin that a package can be improved.

“Mercedes this year and McLaren last year, both of them they proved that it’s possible to recover a significant gap to the leaders,” he said.

“Mercedes was fighting with us for four races, and now they won two Grand Prix. McLaren was out of Q1 for few races at the beginning of last year, and they were fighting for victory. So it is possible.

“It’s up to us, it’s up to the team to understand the upgrades. Where are the key parts of the car to find performance? How to find that performance? We have the facilities. We will have the wind tunnel at the end of the year.”

In the short-term Alonso expects the AMR24 to be competitive in Belgium this weekend.

“I don’t see any reason why not,” he said. “I think Budapest probably was, at least on our expectations, a little bit more difficult. Maybe Spa is a little bit better for our package.

“But we changed the car so much in Hungary that we come here with some extra tests to do, after all the learnings of Budapest. So I think FP1, FP2, we still have to dedicate them to test the new package. And let’s see where we are.”

He added: “We have a lot of test ideas to maximise the package. But also the weather is not looking great for tomorrow, so maybe we don’t have that possibility.

“It will be gold if it’s dry, because I think we can optimise a little bit the car, and then we need to be in the points. Both cars in the points, both cars in Q3, that’s the clear target.”

Alonso made an interesting observation about why it’s so hard for teams to optimise their cars under the current regulations.

“The pursuit of adding downforce the car is more fragile, and more peaky on everything that you do,” he said. “Obviously one thing is testing cars on the wind tunnel, on ideal and consistent conditions.

“And on a racetrack, here in Spa you go at 60km/h in Turn 1, you go at 300 in Tune 10-11. The last corner, it goes uphill, I think, 8%.