Questions about team orders, potential tensions between teammates and concerns about where certain teams are headed going forward dominated talk at the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday.
We’re talking about Aston Martin, of course.
Indeed, how McLaren handled the split between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris grabbed the initial headlines, but similar issues emerged at Aston Martin over a series of team orders late in the race. Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll were both on the edge of the points late in the race, with Alonso in 10th place and Stroll just behind in 11th.
However, because Stroll was on fresher tyres, Alonso was told that if he couldn’t catch Tsunoda he would swap positions with Stroll to allow his teammate to overtake the Visa Cash App RB F1 Team driver on fresher tyres. “Fernando, you have one more lap to catch Tsunoda, but if you can’t, we’re going to give Lance a chance,” he said. Said Alonso’s race engineer, Chris Cronin. “Seven laps to go. Seven laps to go.”
Alonso was also told that if Stroll could not catch Tsunoda he would be given the position back.
“[W]”If he doesn’t get in, we’ll make a substitution,” Cronin added. “We’ll make a substitution.”
On the other side of the pit wall, Stroll was being advised on tactics: “Fernando needs to get the DRS out, get past him into Turn 1 and then get past Tsunoda after that,” said race engineer Andrew Vizard. I let him know“Now I’m doing everything I can to catch Tsunoda, otherwise I’ll be replaced at the end of the race,” Vizard added.
Stroll was chipping away at Tsunoda’s advantage but was never in a position to overtake, and in the final lap Vizard warned Stroll that he needed to cede the position.
“It’s the last lap,” Vizard warned, “so if you can’t catch up now you have to drop back and take the line. Fernando is four seconds behind. There’s no pressure behind you. It would be better to drop back and let Fernando pass. He’s four seconds behind.”
However, Stroll did not fight back and took the chequered flag in 10th place.
Neither driver addressed post-race team orders, but did speak about other strategy decisions implemented during the race.
“Unfortunately, we missed out on some points today and didn’t optimise our race. We pitted quite early and from there it was just a matter of time. [tires]”It’s the first long-distance race with the new package so we need to analyse the new updates and learn more before Belgium next week,” Alonso said.
“It was a difficult race for us, we didn’t optimise our strategy and we weren’t competitive enough,” Stroll said. [tire] The car is deteriorating quickly. We have a lot of work to do as a team for the next round. Spa is a completely different track, so hopefully it will suit our car better.”
As for why he didn’t change, Stroll seemed to think he would have caught Alonso anyway on fresher tyres, which may have been why he was reluctant to try and get a position back at the end – and of course we’re talking about 10th place and the last points up for grabs.
Not anything bigger.
