Fernando Alonso Explains Why He Settled for 7th at 2023 Spanish Grand Prix to Save Aston Martin F1 Team

Fernando Alonso said he had to settle for seventh behind teammate Lance Stroll at the 2023 Spanish Grand Prix to avoid damage to the Aston Martin F1 team. Alonso started from the ninth grid due to the damage to the floor in qualifying. He pitted late in the race for the hard tyres, overtaking Guanyu Zhou, Yuki Tsunoda and Esteban Ocon to move up to seventh behind his teammate.

“I’m not going to attack my teammate,” Alonso said over the radio, just two seconds behind Stroll in sixth. At the end of the race, Alonso told the team there was ‘zero risk’ and took the checkered flag in 7th place, the lowest of the season, within a second of Stroll. “It was 10 laps to the end of the race,” Alonso said after the race. “I’m not crazy. I hurt the floor yesterday and I don’t want to hurt it anymore today and I don’t want him to hurt the floor..But I just thought I’d make sure I got this place. For us, 6th and 7th, 7th and 6th are the same thing.” “I regret my mistake yesterday. If I can rewind all night and qualify again, things will be different. So now I can only think about it in Canada and I want to use this motivation to have a good weekend in Canada.” It was the fewest points in a round so far and allowed Mercedes to move up to second place in the Constructors’ Championship. Alonso admits he couldn’t keep up with Mercedes’ pace at the Catalunya circuit. “I think we didn’t have the pace, that was the biggest problem,” said Alonso. “It’s not that we were unlucky or had a different strategy or anything like that,” he said. “We were slower than Mercedes. We were slower on the softs and on the hards. Just focus on Alpine and AlphaTauri and keep pace with Ferrari. I was just trying to keep up and in the end we were ahead of Ferrari because they only scored points with Carlos[Sainz Jr.]We lost points against Mercedes but they are now We did a good job over the weekend, let’s do our best next time.” Alonso passed his former teammate in the second half of the race to move up to seventh on lap 52 when he had to overcome Ocon’s solid defense, but Ocon was attacked by Alonso and moved to the right at the pitlane exit, and Alonso was driven to the pitwall side. Despite Ocon’s aggressive defense, Alonso said he had “nothing to say” about the move. “Maybe it was different on TV, I don’t know,” Alonso said. “From my side, I overtook Zhou, Tsunoda and Esteban, but for me they all felt the same.” Aston Martin’s performance over the weekend was a reality show for them after a strong start to the season. When asked if he was, Alonso replied, “No, I don’t think so.” “I think in two weeks we will see a completely different picture and hopefully we will be able to fight Red Bull very soon.”