Fernando Alonso makes magic in qualifying in the rain, Lance Stroll writes off the F1 race

After Lance Stroll’s brilliant time in the first and only Chinese GP practice session, things looked like the world was upside down at Aston Martin on Friday. Formula 1 veteran Fernando Alonso immediately rectified this in long-distance qualifying. The Asturian worked his magic in the rain while Stroll once again had to leave work early.

Fernando Alonso shines in a difficult period of rain

“It was a tense qualifying race,” Alonso summed up. “We made progress and got into SQ3 safely in eighth place before it rained heavily.” After that, it wasn’t like eighth place anymore, because there was so much more possible. In the rain of SQ3, Alonso showed his class in the middle and attacked at the front. Third place on the grid is the best of the season so far, even if it is ‘only’ for one race. For a while it was even seen as the first row, but the pole position of Lando Norris was restored after it was canceled. More about that here:

“The tires seemed better every lap, but the track got worse and worse as the rain increased. It was difficult to judge how much you were holding on and how much risk you had to take,” Alonso explained the drivers’ problem in the final part of qualifying. Shanghai’s new international asphalt circuit provided very little traction in these situations. The distance also shows this. Alonso finished third despite losing two seconds to Norris’ pole time.

With Norris and Lewis Hamilton in front of him and Max Verstappen next to him, the starting grid promises high excitement for the Spaniard. Alonso briefly had to worry about losing his starting position due to an incident on pit lane. The Spaniard had defeated the local warrior Guanyu Zhou. The stewards watched the case and realized from the video footage that Alonso only went through the pit lane after the pit lane ended. This is allowed, so ‘No further action’. Despite a good starting position, the two-time world champion keeps a low profile and says only “a few points” in the sprint is his goal. Aston Martin hasn’t been able to keep pace with Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren recently, but rain could once again fall on the race. And then everything seems to be there.

Lance Stroll dropped out of the race after qualifying badly

Lance Stroll is considered an expert in wet conditions. But things were not that far for the Canadian. After a surprisingly good training session, he was quietly relegated to fifteenth place in the still dry SQ2. He lost half a second to team leader Alonso. The first attempt failed and the second crashed: “I didn’t have the grip I needed in the dry qualifying. Then we were surprised by the rain, so I couldn’t do it. The second fastest lap in SQ2 is managed.”

The sprint is over for the Stroll, as only the first eight in the sprint get points. So it will be more of a test for Sunday’s race: “Our options are limited in the sprint as we start from P15, but we will use today’s training and see what we can do for the rest of the weekend.” To do that, Stroll will have to do better in qualifying than he did on Friday. At least with the new parc ferme controls he has the opportunity to work on the setup of his AMR24 before qualifying.