Back-of-the-pack derby
In Suzuka, at Honda’s home race, the Aston Martin team finally managed to bring one of its cars to the checkered flag, albeit one lap down from the winner Antonelli. The one to achieve this ‘feat’ was Fernando Alonso, who at the end of the race hailed as a small success the fact that the AMR26 was finally able to complete a race distance: “We have many goals to achieve and this was one of them: finishing a race. We didn’t manage it in Australia, in China or in the first test, so Suzuka was the first time ever and we hope the team has enough data to understand the car a bit better and be in a better position for the next race,” said the Spaniard.
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But the most interesting and amusing words, even if they have a bitter taste for Aston Martin fans, were those spoken by Lance Stroll, who instead in Japan was forced to wave the white flag after 30 laps. Half-jokingly, in fact, the Canadian driver spoke about the battle on track that saw him pitted against Alonso and the ‘private’ mini-championship that he and the two-time world champion find themselves facing. “I enjoyed the battle with Fernando for the last and second-to-last position – commented Stroll junior – I overtook him and then we found ourselves in our own little Aston Martin-Honda championship fighting each other for about 30 laps. It was fun”.
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Alonso then revealed that the duel between the two had already been ‘studied’ before the race to try to provide useful data to the team: “Before the race we had said that maybe our race would be a bit more solitary and that, if both cars ran together, maybe it would also be a useful opportunity to collect data, in terms of energy management and different engine mappings, so it was quite fun – revealed #14 – unfortunately [Lance] had to retire the car and we missed the second part of the fun.”
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