Alonso, who frees in Bahrain
Before they were just tests, now they’re just free practice. The fact is that qualifying is only 24 hours away and Fernando Alonso is still up front. In the conditions that we will find in Sunday’s race, the Spaniard set the best time of FP2 (1:30.907), once again showing off a great race pace that promises to put him in the fight for the upper floors. How tall? Difficult to say, because as long as the teams do not run on equal terms without suspecting that they have followed different work plans, only assumptions can be made without claims of absolute truth.
Aston Martin, ambitions when you grow up
Something can be said, however, because the two-time world champion finished in the lead in a session in which all the teams had an interest in pushing, considering how FP2 was the only opportunity to practice the race and qualifying in conditions “real”, and that Toto Wolff, Chris Horner and now Laurent Mekies have put the Aston Martin among the cars that can compete for a podium finish on Sunday. A size that would finally reflect Lawrence Stroll’s large investments in the Silverstone facilities.
Alonso-Verstappen, the comparison on race pace
What makes the fans of the number 14 and of the Aston Martin team dream are not only the flying laps but also the race pace. With the same soft compound and track conditions (they were lapping in the same minutes) Alonso showed a pace only 28 thousandths slower than that of Max Verstappen. In brackets, in the table, the duration of the rubber at the time of the closure of the lap.
Stint C3 | Verstappen | Alonso |
1:37.641 (5) | 1:36.251 (6) | |
1:37.136 (6) | 1:36,479 (7) | |
1:36,898 (7) | 1:36,712 (8) | |
1:37.179 (8) | 1:37.192 (9) | |
1:36,827 (9) | 1:37.288 (10) | |
1:37,230 (10) | 1:37.502 (11) | |
1:37.324 (11) | 1:37,542 (12) | |
cool down (12) | 1:38.116 (13) | |
1:37.268 (13) | 1:37.479 (14) | |
1:37.169 (14) | 1:37.914 (15) | |
1:37.229 (15) | cool down (16) | |
1:37.519 (16) | cool down (17) | |
Average | 1:37,220 | 1:37,248 |
The unknowns
Should Alonso fans sing victory? No. First of all, even if he had a better pace, he would have to deal with Verstappen, a driver he highly esteems and who he “misses” as a direct opponent. The biggest unknown remains fuel: we don’t know the fuel loads of Red Bull and Aston Martin or how much the two cars have revved up the engine, and therefore the margin for growth is unknown. Finally, the degradation of the AMR23 seems more normal, with Alonso pushing a lot in the out-lap and not being as constant as Verstappen, who actually improves towards the end of the run. A factor that suggests how Nando played a different program from the reigning champion.
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