Fernando Alonso believes Lance Stroll’s difficult start to the 2023 season has been more down to bad luck than poor performances from his Aston Martin teammate.
Although Aston Martin have enjoyed an impressive start to 2023, Stroll has struggled to match his team leader picking up 27 points and retiring twice whilst Alonso has 93 points and five podiums.
“I think Lance has been very unlucky in the last two events,” Alonso told select members of the press, including Total-Motorsport.com. “I think if we go back to Bahrain, he was driving with one hand and he was very fast.
“In Jeddah, he had the exhaust problem when we was in front of the Ferraris in P5 and then in Miami, we were risking too much in Q1 and that compromises the race.
“And the debris from Lando’s car completely compromised the whole weekend. I think if you see the whole weekend in Monaco, in FP3 he was within a tenth and a half of the fastest.
“He is providing the right feedback in the strategy about everything, so I really hope for him that he has ideally more luck because I don’t think that he is missing any pace.”
Alonso hits back at the media
Fernando Alonso has said that F1 discourse focuses on the negatives, in the wake of Aston Martin’s strategic error in the 2023 Monaco Grand Prix.
The Spanish driver also bemoaned the storylines in F1, believing that there is a tendency to report on the negatives rather than the positives.
Alonso pitted for mediums when the rain arrived in Monte Carlo, but the stint only lasted one lap as he was pulled in for intermediates as the dry conditions worsened.
“Maybe they have a crystal ball,” Alonso said, “And you know the conditions, you know who stops and who doesn’t stop and then finally it rains and you need the inters [intermediate tyres], 100 percent then you stop for the inters.
“What I don’t like in Formula 1 is we always see the negatives and we all see everything as very easy from the sofa, and I will give you an example.
“If we stop for the inters, you would’ve only seen this week about how Red Bull stopped one lap too late and not about how Aston Martin was very brave and chose the right tyre.
“We will only say that Red Bull was chose the wrong tyre at the wrong time and stopped Max one lap later.
“This is just the mentality of Formula 1, the unlimited search for perfection, of which it is not possible to always reach.
“I think that the biggest thing is that every race, we never put enough eyes to the right things that teams do in very stressful moments.
“We always spot the one thing that they do wrong, and then we go hard on them.”
