Fernando Alonso, from the Aston Martin F1 team, had a remarkable performance during the Japanese Grand Prix, which he described as one of his top five weekends in Formula 1. Despite starting in fifth position, Alonso remained cautious due to concerns about Aston Martin’s race pace with the AMR24. He ended up finishing in sixth place after being overtaken by Charles Leclerc from Ferrari.
Alonso made a different tire choice compared to the other top 10 drivers, starting with the soft compound. This decision was influenced by the tire allocation for the weekend in Suzuka. He explained: “We didn’t have any other tire available, so we chose our race since Thursday. We were thinking that this was the best strategy, to have soft-medium-hard tires in the race, and that’s what we executed.” Alonso did not feel a significant disadvantage during the first stint with the soft tires, considering it an acceptable performance.
At the end of the race, Alonso faced pressure from Oscar Piastri from McLaren and George Russell from Mercedes. Russell, who had crashed while chasing Alonso in Australia, attributed his inability to overtake Piastri until the last lap to Alonso providing him with DRS. When asked about his confidence in maintaining sixth place, Alonso admitted: “Obviously, not completely confident, because you never know what the pace of others will do at the end of the race. But yes, I think it was my best weekend, I don’t know, among the top five of all for me. I think the fifth place yesterday in qualifying and the sixth place today in the race are completely out of position, so yes, very proud.”
Alonso emphasized that this weekend was exceptional because he managed to surpass both Mercedes and McLaren with a slower car. While Aston Martin closed in on Mercedes in the Constructors’ Championship, Alonso’s teammate Lance Stroll struggled and finished in 12th place. Alonso acknowledged: “Well, I think we are the fifth fastest team with a good gap to the fourth and a good gap to the sixth, we are well established there. I think there is no way to compare ourselves to Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull, and Mercedes, so that’s why finishing fifth and sixth is completely unusual. We did it in Australia as well, finished sixth, here sixth again, I think fifth in Jeddah, so we are executing the races very well. And the others are experimenting a bit with strategy and other things, and we are capitalizing on those opportunities, but we need to improve the pace for sure.”
