Fernando Alonso was left frustrated by Aston Martin’s strategy choice in Hungary after tumbling out of the points and finishing 11th.
Alonso started the race in seventh place and briefly gained a spot from Carlos Sainz at the start.
However like other soft tyre starters the Spaniard was called in for an early first stop, coming in on lap seven.
Left with two long stints to the end of the race he knew straight away that it would be a struggle, and that proved to be the case.
In the closing lap the team told him to let the faster Lance Stroll past to attack Yuki Tsunoda up ahead. Although the Canadian failed to pass the VCARB the positions were not switched back.
“The strategy I think it was not optimal,” said Alonso when asked by formu1a.uno about the early stop. “Obviously, very easy to say after the race, but at that point probably the team felt that it was the good one.
“Bit surprised when we stopped in lap seven, because we talked this morning, our car is hard on tyres normally. So if you stop in lap seven, there are 63 laps to do, with one medium and one hard.
“So it was a challenge from that point. And yeah, we didn’t have the pace, and the strategy didn’t help.”
He added: “We spoke this morning, we have to even a little bit the stints, if not, there is a high price to pay if you do a very long stint with one set of tyres. They called me box in lap seven, on lap eight, I knew that the race was over.”
Alonso said he wasn’t too bothered about ceding the final point to Stroll, who did a longer opening stint of 14 laps on the soft tyres.
“I didn’t care too much. It was one point for the team. It doesn’t matter which car takes that point. And I think he was trying until the last corner. So, yeah, I think it was the right thing to do.”
Alonso was non-committal on the value of the latest upgrade package.
“I think we need to analyse,” he said. “But for sure, these 70 laps, there are a lot of things to learn from the car. It’s the first race, the first long distance we do with the package.
“So let’s understand all the numbers that the factory can see on data, also the tyre degradation that we had today, and see if we can learn something for Spa.”
