Aston Martin, what a difference between Alonso and Stroll
Reading the drivers’ standings, it seems that Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll have driven completely different cars in 2023. In the “team” box, however, the name Aston Martin always appears. Can the 135 point margin that the two-time world champion has accumulated over the Canadian be attributed only to the difference in talent and experience? Although the gap between the two is evident, it was difficult to predict at the start of the season that the Spaniard would end the year with more than triple the points of his teammate.
According to Aston Martin, in fact, the problems with results do not arise from the drivers. Via performance director Tom McCulloughthe team rallied around the drivers, taking on the responsibilities of a year that started very well and ended in a desolate way, despite Alonso’s masterpiece at Interlagos.
McCullough’s words
“I think what we’ve seen from both of our drivers is that if we give them a good car, if we perform well operationally over the weekend and if they don’t have any unfortunate circumstances, they can get us good points. Our main problem wasn’t the drivers this year: our problems derive from the fact that we have not always been able to provide a strong enough car, while other times we have had technical or strategic problems, other times a risk in qualifying which was a boomerang for us“.
The British engineer further defended the performance of Stroll, son of the patron Lawrence: “Fernando is a force of nature and is pushing us with his motivation. It’s not easy to develop a car in Formula 1 against very good teams, and he was fantastic. We’ve known Lance well for a few seasons. At the beginning of the year he was really defensive. When the car was competitive, he scored points. There were several circumstances (which negatively affected his season, ed.). At Suzuka we had a rear wing failure, it didn’t do anything bad. And in the end, on the days in which the car managed to get points, he was often unable to do so for reasons beyond his control“.
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