Bottom of the group derby
In Suzuka, Honda’s home race, the Aston Martin team finally managed to bring your own single-seater under the checkered flagalbeit one lap behind the winner Antonelli. This ‘feat’ was accomplished by 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 succeed in Australia, China or the first test, so Suzuka was the first time ever and hopefully the team will have enough data to understand the car a little better and be in a better position for the next race”, said the Spaniard.
But the most interesting and amusing words, even if with a bitter taste for the Aston Martin fans, were those pronounced by Lance Strollwho instead in Japan was forced to raise the white flag after 30 laps. In fact, between seriously and jokingly, the Canadian pilot spoke about the battle on the track that pitted him against Alonso and the ‘private’ mini-championship that he and the two-time world champion are facing. “I enjoyed the battle with Fernando for last and penultimate positions – commented Stroll junior – I got over it and then we found ourselves in our little Aston Martin-Honda league fighting each other for about 30 laps. It was fun”.
Alonso then revealed that the duel between the two had already been ‘studied’ before the match to try to provide useful data to the team: “Before the race we said that perhaps our race would be a little more solitary and that, if both cars ran together, perhaps it would also be a useful opportunity to collect data, in terms of energy management and the different engine mappingsso it was pretty fun – revealed #14 – Unfortunately [Lance] he had to collect the car and we missed the second part of the fun.”
