Fernando Alonso said goodbye to the American Grand Prix with very bad feelings The race had already started uphill since Friday’s free practice and ended dramatically after he abandoned the season for the first time due to a fault in his Aston Martin.
The Asturian driver set off from the pit lane after breaking the parking area, like his teammate Lance Stroll, in order to find solutions to the problems detected in both cars since Friday. Fernando Returned to Qatar setup and soon realized that his AMR23 had much more performance, which led him to make a spectacular comeback.
He finished ninth with six laps to go and was close to eighth, but his team detected a fault in the car’s rear suspension and Alonso had to retireThere was obvious disappointment after Aston Martin completed its worst weekend of the year.
“It was a great race for us, a great comeback and a very fast race where we had to start from the pitlane. I could have finished eighth, it was a very good race. But unfortunately the car had to retire due to damage.” to the ground.. It’s painful because we had no rhythm all weekend and we went through a lot in the race but we still had to give up,” Fernando summarized after the race.
“Zero points hurt but nothing can be done” “And next week we will concentrate on Mexico,” he added. Alonso, resignation. Regarding the team’s strategy of having a different car configuration for each driver, he commented that it was a decision based on mutual consent.
“It was 50 percent, the team asked the drivers and we didn’t have any preference, we just wanted to help the team collect as much data as possible for next weekend.” This was a team decision and there is now a lot of information to analyze in the factory. Lance and I hadn’t done many laps this weekend and were going into the race blind. We made different settings, did a test session and felt more competitive this weekend than in other sessions. “This is good news, but we need to understand many things,” he warned.
Regarding Aston Martin’s performance this year, the two-time champion driver stated that they are considering the 2024 car: “There are ups and downs for everyone. We started the season very well and we are no longer as competitive as we were at the beginning. We will try to learn and help the team understand the weaknesses of the car and the lack of progress in the next races and try to be stronger next year,” he concluded.