From thrill to joy
It ended with a wild party on the first Sunday of the new season for Aston Martin, who picked up an incredible and well-deserved podium finish with Fernando Alonso and a sixth position in some ways even more surprising thanks to Lance Stroll, capable of putting even George Russell’s Mercedes behind him despite the precarious physical conditions that accompanied him after the mountain bike accident he suffered a couple of weeks ago. But the weekend for the ‘verdona’ at Silverstone could have taken a very different turn already in the first corners of the Grand Prix. In fact, Alonso and Stroll almost destroyed their team’s dreams of glory during the first lap, when the Canadian inadvertently ‘rammed’ the two-time world champion.
Danger escaped
The contact was completely involuntary but could have been much worse, given the dynamics. In fact, Stroll made a very deep braking in turn 4 to stay in front of Russell at the same time that Alonso ‘cut’ the curve in front of him to look for a intersection of trajectories with Hamilton’s other Mercedes, which had just passed him. Of the two, the greater responsibility certainly lies with the native of Montreal, who however paradoxically was also capable of avoid worse trouble. In fact, realizing the probable contact coming with his new companion, Stroll tried to get as close to the curb as possible, only grazing his sister car. This helped to ‘save’ the race for both AMR23s, who were then quick to recover during the race on both Mercedes.
Explanation at the end of the race
It was also quite interesting to note how Alonso himself experienced this particular moment via radio and how his ‘perception’ of the facts changed after the race, when the team explained to him in detail what really happened. In fact, the former Alpine driver had asked the team to make themselves heard in the race direction, imagining that it was George Russell’s W14 that had hit him. Once the race was over, however, it was his track engineer who revealed the truth to him: “Lance was trying to pass George – it was explained to Alonso – and while you crossed paths with Hamilton Lance couldn’t stop in time. There was no damage to the cars, so everything is fine“. However, Alonso did not bat an eyelid, also given the team’s overtime, simply replying: “Okay, I thought it was George“.
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