Fernando Alonso wants Aston Martin to sort out its lack of straightline speed in Formula 1, so he can stop needing to “invent” bold places to overtake.
The Spaniard secured his first points of the season at last weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix after a frenetic recovery drive following a trip through the gravel trap early on.
But after grabbing attention with some bold overtaking action around the outside of Turn 3 in Spain – which included an early slice past Nico Hulkenberg and a later move against Franco Colapinto – Alonso said his bravery was not anything to shout about.
Instead, having had to execute some similar inventive passes at Tosa during the recent Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, he says his life would be made much easier if he could overtake on the straights.
Reflecting on his race, Alonso said: “We had a lot of front tyre degradation, so the front left was done by seven laps into the stint.
“And then we lacked top speed, so on the straights we were losing a lot.
“I didn't make any single overtake on the DRS. They were all made in Turn 3 on the outside, which is not a normal place to overtake.
“But we have to invent these kinds of moves. Also in Imola, it was out of Turn 7 where I made like three overtakes in the last few laps.
“We need to solve this situation and start overtaking on the straight, with the DRS, like everyone does.”
Alonso’s plight about the characteristics of the Aston Martin are backed up by speed trap figures from qualifying in Spain.
Based on how fast cars are going as they cross the start-finish line, just after the DRS activation zone, it is clear just how much slower the Aston Martin car was.
Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri topped the rankings as they hit 297.5km/h, while Lance Stroll (292.3km/h) and Alonso (292.2km/h) were down in 17th and 18th spots.
One of the other downsides of needing to pull off aggressive overtakes is that it punishes tyres – so increases degradation.
Aston Martin’s chief trackside officer Mike Krack said the squad was aware of the factors at play and had to work on delivering gains by better optimising its aero efficiency.
“We need to improve,” he explained. “As you have seen, we had to put quite a lot of manoeuvres, and not on the straights or out of corners.
“By doing that you use a lot of tyres by trying to pass like this, like around the outside of Turn 3. So it's something that we need to fix.
“We need to review how we came to this [downforce] level here, because we need to review how we decided to select this wing.
“We discussed it just now in the debrief, and we have discussed it already before. It's something really to look at.
“We are making the life of the drivers very difficult, because you are looking more in the mirror than anything.”
Alonso admits that the combination of needing to push harder in the corners allied to the top speed issue was hurting Aston Martin’s form in races and throwing away good qualifying efforts.
“We need to improve a little bit our straightline speed and also the [tyre] degradation,” he explained.
“Saturdays are quite competitive and Sundays we seem to take a step back. I’m happy with the first points, and it was good timing with the safety car in the end.
“But if we go back to Thursday and we redo the weekend, we need to change something on the car to be a little bit more Sunday-biased than Saturday.”
