Fernando Alonso admits that he made a mistake when he ran into Zhou Guanyu early in the Austrian GP. Alonso locked up at Turn 3 when he tried to follow Daniel Ricciardo down the inside of Zhou, the subsequent contact sending the Sauber wide into the run-off area.
Alonso later received a 10-second penalty for the incident.
“I made a mistake,” he said. “I didn’t expect to lock up, and then when you lock up, it seems that you go on throttle because the car doesn’t have any more retardation.
“They braked extremely early. I think both were trying to maybe play the DRS catch or whatever. And then my fault, my mistake. Nothing I can do.”
Alonso went on to be classified a lowly 18th, while teammate Lance Stroll couldn’t better 13th after another poor weekend for the Silverstone team.
After a difficult sprint, changes were made to both AMR24s before main qualifying, and Alonso suggested that they had improved the car.
“I think it was better today than yesterday in terms of race pace,” he said. “But when you start at the back in this group of cars, the tyre management becomes nearly impossible, and then you fall behind always.
“We need to have more pace. I think more races we do with these difficulties, more clear answers we get, and this is what we need to work out now.”
Alonso: Aston Martin know how to improve
He insisted that the team knows what it has to do: “A very clear feeling, and we need to get better for the next race, and about the details, it’s very clear answer. So let’s try to get better at Silverstone.
“I think especially in the next race, Silverstone is our home Grand Prix, there cannot be any other home Grand Prix than Silverstone for Aston Martin.
“So we really need to perform better there. I’m a little more optimistic that we can turn things around.”
Alonso conceded that the field is extremely close now.
“I think the qualifying, especially when you put the new soft tyres, always give you a lot of grip for one lap,” he said. “That peak grip is masking some of the car performances. So, I think the real picture is more in the race than qualifying.
“In qualifying, everyone has the grip. So yeah, it’s tight, and Q1 probably is one of the most stressful moments of the weekend, even for the top teams, because there is no guarantee that they will go through.”
