F1 | Aston Martin: the secret is to get the tires up to temperature

The paddock is divided. There are those who are hoping for a qualifying session and a dry Grand Prix and those who are crossing their fingers hoping to put the slick tires aside until Sunday evening. In the latter group there is Aston Martin, which yesterday closed the day surprisingly with the first half of Fernando Alonso and the third of Lance Stroll.

There are those who have snubbed this result, given the atypical nature of the day which was strongly conditioned by the variability of the weather, but there are also those who believe that without the completely dry asphalt the Aston Martin’s potential is precisely that seen yesterday, i.e. from very first positions.

On a surface that never offered ideal grip, Alonso literally went wild, confirming a very competitive pace in several sequences. At certain moments Fernando’s pace (and also that of Stroll) was impressive, and there seems to be a technical reason behind the exploit, immediately underlined by some opponents.

Since the beginning of the season, the AMR24 has confirmed itself as a very aggressive single-seater on the tyres, a problem that has had a negative impact on the race pace. In the conditions seen yesterday, i.e. with a cold track and little grip, the first difficulty for all the drivers on the track was managing to bring the tires into the correct operating window, an operation which Stroll and Alonso managed to do impeccably and in a short time. time.

However, Fernando kept a low profile at the end of the day. “It was a difficult Friday for everyone – he commented – we weren’t able to lap in really dry or even very wet track conditions, we were always in the middle. But it could also be like this in qualifying and the race, maybe it will be interesting for you watching from the outside, but for those on the track it could be a gamble, the right decision can make you gain five seconds or vice versa risk ending up at the back of the grid” .

There are those who have hypothesized that Aston Martin’s work program included less petrol on board, a fact which however the team denies, claiming that it was the usual Friday planning. Alonso and Stroll ran with the fuel usually used in the qualifying simulations in FP2, the team says, nothing different from usual.

The only difference between the two Aston Martins and their closest pursuers concerns the use of DRS, left closed by many drivers due to poor grip, but used by Alonso and Stroll.

Is this enough to justify yesterday’s good performance? An initial answer will come from the FP3 session, then the definitive result from qualifying. In the event of a damp or wet track, the two Aston Martins could join the party and in this case not just Alonso.

The combination of ‘home track’ and ‘rain’ seems to be made specifically to give a boost to Stroll, who has always been very comfortable in the wet and very motivated to do well on his home circuit. The last time F1 had to deal with unpredictable weather and a significant lack of grip (2020 Turkish GP) Stroll managed to get his first and only pole in Formula 1, only to give up in the race due to of a very questionable strategy of his pit wall.