Fernando Alonso humiliates a confused Lance Stroll

After the first race in the last qualifying session, Alonso was still in eighth place. “I don’t know what else I have to do to go faster. I thought that was a good lap,” said the slightly confused Spaniard to his race engineer when he told him the time positions.

But in typical Alonso fashion, the two-time world champion still gained some time in the final test – 0.163 seconds to be exact. In Formula 1, which is very competitive today, this meant a three-place advantage.

“Everything is very close in qualifying this year we saw today with Nico (Hülkenberg, editor) and Valtteri (Bottas, editor) were almost three tenths behind us. “In the race you can see the real movement of the car. That’s something we still have a problem with. We compete on Saturdays, but not so much on Sundays. On Saturday you can hide car problems with tire grip. ”

Did Aston Martin update successfully? Drivers with divided opinions

Aston Martin was one of the first teams to bring a major update package to the track in the 2024 Formula 1 season. A revised underbody, redesigned fairings and new lighting were fitted to the AMR24. In Jeddah, the Silverstone team has already introduced a new rear wing.

After qualifying, the two drivers had different evaluations of the update package. “I have nothing positive to say about the update. But things are looking good for Fernando,” said a frustrated Lance Stroll.

Fernando Alonso looked more optimistic. “Yesterday I still had the old package, today I had a new one. So tonight we can analyze the data and calculate the improvement,” explained the Asturian. “But everything felt really good in qualifying. It was a little unexpected that we were so competitive. Six months ago we were 1.5 seconds from pole position. Now it’s only four tenths. We’re definitely moving in the right direction.”

A fact that Alonso left out when evaluating the update: Last year, the Spaniard made a mistake in the final race of Q3. His time in Q2 was a tenth faster than Q3 in 2023. This means that an improvement of 1.5 seconds becomes ‘only’ 1.4 seconds.