Fernando Alonso expressed surprise that his Aston Martin team’s pit decision in the wet conditions was called into question over whether it cost him an opportunity to win the Monaco Grand Prix.
Aston Martin opted to start the race on the hard compound tire in a move that appeared to open up more potential to make a pit stop of rain hit, as he would have a wider pit window than other drivers. That scenario is exactly how the race played out, with Alonso trailing Max Verstappen by under nine seconds when he made his first pit stop as rain started to intensify on lap 54. However, Alonso took on medium tires rather than the intermediates being opted for by those pitting directly before him — including teammate Lance Stroll — and had to then make another stop one lap later to reverse the decision at the same time Verstappen stopped from the lead.
“I don’t know, I heard this question in the TV pen as well — I was surprised a little bit,” Alonso said. “I didn’t live the race from the cockpit as probably you saw on the outside. For me, it was very clear that the track, on that lap we stopped, was completely dry apart from Turns 7 and 8. So how would I put on the inters? It was completely dry, 99% of the track. So I stopped for dries.
“The weather forecast, it was a small shower, a small quantity of rain as well what we had as a team. And we had a lot of margin behind us to put the dry tires and if necessary then the inter tires. Maybe it was extra safe. I don’t know.
“That minute and a half that it took to go through Turn 5, 6, 7 and 8 again, it changed completely. The outlap on the dry tires, it was very wet when I got to those corners. The lap that we stopped, it was completely dry.”
Given the fact Verstappen lost nine seconds on the lap Alonso came into the pits and stopped for intermediates himself as soon as the Spaniard came in, the lap times suggest if Alonso had made the switch to intermediates initially he’d have jumped the Red Bull. Regardless, he feels Aston showed its intent in opting for the alternate strategy in the first place.
“I think we didn’t have a chance (in the dry), to be honest,” he said. “I think we were brave on the strategy. It’s not normal that you start on the first row of the grid and you choose the hard tire, trying to do the opposite of the leaders. That shows the commitment from the team and how aggressive everyone was in Aston Martin to try and get the win.
“We knew there were some downsides to that strategy. We could have ended up maybe P5, P6 or something like that, off the podium. This morning we discussed it and we said we’d had podiums this year, so we go for all or nothing, and we start on the hard tire. And we didn’t have the pace. That was the only problem we had in the race.
“The strategy was good. The medium tire was behaving surprisingly good, in our opinion. We were hoping for more graining or bigger degradation, and Max was able to drive 50 laps on an amazing pace. That’s the reason why he won the race, not because of the strategy — he was just faster than us.”