Formula 1 News: Aston Martin Bounces Back with Stronger Qualifying Performance in Montreal
After a string of challenging race weekends that saw Aston Martin drop to sixth in the Formula 1 pecking order, the Silverstone-based team roared back to life with a compelling qualifying performance in Montreal, Canada. Fernando Alonso’s sixth-place finish, just 0.228 seconds behind Mercedes’ polesitter George Russell, marked a significant improvement for the team.
The closely contested Q3 shootout saw Russell edge out Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, with Alonso hot on their heels. The tight margin between the top six drivers, including both McLarens and Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull, highlighted the difficulty of negotiating the damp, low-grip Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
“It was a tricky qualifying for everyone with the wind and the drops of rain. You always lose a little bit of confidence and I think no one did a perfect lap,” Alonso, a two-time Formula 1 world champion, noted. “It was the case for me as well. I didn’t put everything together in Q3, so when you see that you are only two tenths from pole position, it hurts a little bit.”
When pressed for details on where he lost time, Alonso pinpointed Turn 2, where oversteer forced him to reconsider his lap. “I lost the car so badly that I was just thinking to abort the lap or keep going. I kept going and I was P6, so if two tenths put you in pole position, maybe everything was already in one corner. I was just driving very aggressively after that to recover the lap.”
Alonso’s performance was a welcome respite from the team’s recent struggles. “I think we had a little bit of a full picture now of the car after the first nine races, so we were expecting a little bit better weekend here,” he reflected. “Already [on Friday] we felt a little bit more confident with the car. The last two events we were out of Q1, so that was race over, basically. But now starting P6 and P9 [for team-mate Lance Stroll], we have a chance to score points.”
McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri echoed Alonso’s sentiments, qualifying just 0.021s and 0.103s off pole in third and fourth respectively. “When you’re so close, you always think, ‘could I have jumped in the car for that little bit more?'”, Norris mused.
The challenging conditions of the Montreal circuit, combined with the closely fought qualifying session, left many drivers ruing tiny mistakes. “There are a lot of people out there that can say they could have found three or four tenths out there,” Piastri observed. “If you did a perfect lap, you could have been on pole by nearly half a second, so I am sure you will get that from pretty much everyone. Those excuses cancel each other out.”
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