F1 | Aston, golden sixth place: the key is the very low set-up

A sixth place that gives morale, not so much for the position itself, but more for the performance. In the Baku weekend, Aston Martin established itself as the best team in the midfield, managing to make the difference both in qualifying and in the race. However, to understand something more about the British team’s weekend it is useful to start from the beginning, from Friday, when in free practice the team used the two sessions for useful tests to find more indications before the three-week break that will follow the Singapore GP.

Precisely for this reason, Aston was unable to use Friday to carry out comparative tests of the winglets, postponing the test until FP3, so much so that even Tom McCullough, the team’s performance director, explained that realistically they had sacrificed too much of the free practice on the opening day of the GP, as happened in the final part of last season.

Aston had arrived in Baku with a very light overall setup compared to its rivals, seeking maximum top speed on the long straights that characterize Monza, with the hope that, despite the low aerodynamic load, the car could still manage the driven central sector. While in FP3 Lance Stroll switched to a slightly more loaded solution with the idea that it could help with tire management in the race, Fernando Alonso remained on the light solution, which guaranteed an advantage of about 4/5 km/h over his teammate.

A choice that proved to be correct for several reasons: first of all, because the AMR24 established itself as one of the fastest cars ever on the straights and, even more importantly, because the advantage accumulated on the straights allowed it to beat the Williams in qualifying, making the race easier despite some additional difficulties in the second half.

“I think we had more degradation than we expected, but yeah, the top speed was definitely a big help today. In some moments when they were close, I saw that on the straight they weren’t even catching us with DRS, so I was a bit more relaxed than in other races,” Alonso explained at the end of the race, explaining just how crucial this aspect was.

The two FW46s in fact represented a difficult obstacle for everyone to overcome, given what were in any case excellent top speeds, second only to Aston Martin: it is no coincidence that not only Norris had considerable difficulty in overtaking the Williams, but also Haas, which lost a concrete opportunity to score a greater number of points precisely because it was stuck behind the two Grove cars.

Despite Williams trying to push hard by diversifying their strategy from the start, with Franco Colapinto on the medium and Alex Albon on the hard, Alonso managed to maintain his seventh position, even at the time of the pit stop.

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin AMR24, makes a pit stop

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

“We were flexible in terms of strategy. So we more or less followed the trend, and whatever the people around us did, we copied and mirrored the strategy,” explained Alonso. This was crucial, because in reality the Spaniard did not seem to have a clearly superior pace to his rivals for long, so much so that the Argentine was able to stay under two seconds from the Aston Martin driver for over 35 laps, at least until he had to deal with Nico Hulkenberg and teammate Albon.

Having fresher tyres, Albon managed to get rid of both the German from Haas and Colapinto, although he still had to push his tyres in a delicate phase. In fact, when with about ten laps to go the time had come to really make the difference on Alonso, trying to close the gap once and for all, the gap remained constant under a second and a half.

Realistically, as the Spaniard also explained at the end of the race, potentially both Haas and Williams had a better pure pace on paper. What made the difference in this case was above all the track position gained on Saturday with a splendid qualifying, where the high top speeds helped to leave behind very fearsome rivals. Having lost time in overtaking and not being able to match the top speeds of the AMR24 in fact weighed on the race.

“I think Williams and Haas have been generally quicker in the last three events, I would say. Magnussen in Monza was incredibly quick and fast, and even with a 10-second penalty he was ahead of us. So, there are a couple of races where we have been behind and we want to come back and become the fifth fastest team as soon as possible. Singapore, another opportunity,” the Asturian added.