How 'aggressive and ambitious' strategy earned Aston a point

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Aston Martin scored for the first time this season in Monaco, with Fernando Alonso grabbing P10 and the last point on offer at the end of a frantic race. Considering the team only got on top of vibration issues that prevented them from completing full race distances in Miami, to score in Monte Carlo is an impressive turnaround – completed under the watchful gaze of Adrian Newey, who attended the Monaco Grand Prix after missing the previous four rounds. But how did Alonso turn a P21 grid slot into a P10 finish at a track where overtaking is notoriously difficult? Monaco was surprisingly chaotic considering it was run in the dry, with two Safety Cars and a red flag combining to shake things up as only 15 cars finished and seven retired or crashed out. Alonso’s team mate Lance Stroll was one of those to crash, triggering the first Safety Car. With Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz also out after hitting the barriers, Ollie Bearman retiring with car damage and Max Verstappen, Valtteri Bottas and Lando Norris all out with reliability issues, it was clear that there would be points available for the midfield on Sunday. Alonso was one of few drivers to avoid picking up a penalty, with plenty guilty of speeding in the pit lane while rival Sergio Perez was penalised for two separate starting infringements and Hulkenberg had a time penalty for causing a collision. As such, the two-time World Champion managed to rise through the field, keeping out of trouble and crossed the line P12 – with Hulkenberg and Perez’s penalties catapulting him into the top 10. Alonso is a canny operator, and after a scary moment on Friday in practice, kept his weekend very clean. He kept out of trouble at the race start, and pitted very early to swap his medium tyres for a set of softs. There was some concern that the C5 rubber wouldn’t last until the end of the 78-lap race, but it appeared Aston Martin were going aggressive and attempting a one-stop, something the team later confirmed. In the end, he bolted on a second set of softs under the first Safety Car and ran those until the finish, keeping them despite the option to fit another set under the later red flag. The Spaniard was P14 at the restart, but inherited a place when Franco Colapinto fell back and another after George Russell served a drive-through penalty to come home 12th. Alonso was clear on how he achieved his first point of the season from the back of the grid. “I took a lot of risk on Lap 1 and at the restart, and just tried to consolidate whatever position we were in” he said on Sunday. “It was so difficult out there today, but we went aggressive with the strategy, stopping on Lap 3, and we were thinking to go until the end of the race with just one stop. “The red flag restart helped, and we made sure to take the opportunities that were available to us. So, I think we managed the race quite well and it was a nice reward for everybody in the team to score our first point of the year.” Team Ambassador Pedro de la Rosa was on hand to explain the strategy calls that helped earn Aston Martin what could be a crucial point in their fight with Cadillac for P10 in the Championship. “The team was very sharp on the strategy,” he said. “We had a very aggressive strategy, really, to pit on Lap 4 and 5 and go from the unpreferred medium tyre to the preferred soft tyre and do a very long end of the race with that tyre. It was very aggressive. “It was a very ambitious strategy, really, to make that soft tyre live that long. But it really worked out for us and for our car and our drivers. “[P10] is not a win, but it's a little reward to the great work of all the team and the very difficult circumstances for everyone at Silverstone, for everyone at Honda. After just a few races where we could actually never think about finishing a race, today, both cars ran reliably until the end.” Neither car was able to properly finish in Australia, although Stroll did come back out after stopping to gather data, finishing 15 laps down at the flag. Neither driver finished in China either, but Alonso did finally see the chequered flag in Japan, to show some progress from the start of the season when their vibration issue was limiting their running. To go from there to both cars being in the race late on into a Grand Prix, with Alonso in the thick of the midfield action, is a large improvement – especially considering the team have not brought any significant upgrades targeting performance yet, but instead have been focused on reliability. There is still work to do for Aston Martin but they are at least headed in the right direction “We just have to keep working and what I say, being patient, it's not easy for all the teams. Everyone is at Silverstone, everyone at Honda, everyone wants more, all our fans want more, [the] drivers, but we just have to be patient because we know that interesting things are coming,” de la Rosa explained. “We just have to understand the regulations as well as we can, with the current limitations so that when the new package arrives, we have more tools to extract everything from that. “We will expect to improve, we expect to have more grip and more power… We are working very well with Honda, we are very pleased with how Honda has handled all the vibration issues, because it has been an effort that together with them we have solved. “A few weeks ago it looked like something that we were not sure when we could actually solve them. “After this, now we are building on performance, but the performance has to come from every area, chassis, engine, drivability is a very big issue…” There is clearly more work to do for Aston Martin, but the improvements they have made so far are clear to see – and have resulted in a much needed point for the team at long last which leaves them 10th in the Teams' Championship. 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