The 2024 Formula One World Championship returned to Europe this past weekend with its arrival at the historic Imola circuit for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, previously the San Marino Grand Prix. This circuit, being the nearest to Ferrari’s base in Maranello in Italy is considered their ‘home’ race and as one can imagine, the grandstands were a sea of red, in proud and loyal support by the passionate tifosi. This race didn’t take place last year, due to the flooding that occurred in the region and which resulted in tragic loss of lives. No sign of rain this time and we were all set for a traditional schedule race weekend.
Coming to the circuit, the Formula 1 team brought another bag of upgrades to their cars including a new front wing, floor body, floor fences, floor edge, engine cover, rear suspension and rear corner. Just to underline how intense the competition has become all the top 4 teams introduced upgrades to their cars as well, most notably Ferrari. How would all this investment & enhancement translate into increased performance?
Not overwhelmingly better for Aston Martin seemed to be the early indications from the Free Practice sessions on Friday. Only Alonso’s AMR24 had all the updates installed in FP1, so as to run a comparison against Stroll’s car and so that any learnings could be assessed. In that session Alonso finished 10th fastest and Stroll was 12th - just 0.2 of a second separating them. The decision was taken to install all the updates on Stroll’s AMR24 for the second session in which both drivers improved their times, but so did everybody else. Alonso finished 10th again, recording a time of 1:16.838 during the fastest of his 29 laps and Stroll ending up 13th in a time of 1:16.991 logged on the fastest of his 26 laps. With all the data accumulated, the team spent the evening and overnight assessing the impact the upgrades had on the cars.
The final practice session the following day was very short-lived for Alonso. Having completed just 10 laps he lost control of the rear of his AMR23 through the final double left-hand corners, which sent him skidding across the gravel before hitting the barriers. He was, fortunately, unharmed, but his car was wrecked and the session was red flagged so that the remains of his Aston Martin could be removed from the track. In those 10 laps he only achieved the 18th fastest time. After the session resumed Stroll managed to post a respectable 9th fastest time in 1:16.543. For the Aston Martin mechanics though, it was going to be a race against time to try and rebuild Alonso’s car in time for Qualifying which was going to start just 2½ hours later! The big challenge for the mechanics was that with all the budget cap limitations no spares had been produced for all the upgrades that had been put on the car, so his car was rather cobbled together with whatever previous spares were available. Not ideal, but they had him ready just as the first period of Qualifying started. However, it was clear that the car just wasn’t performing as it should, as with 5 minutes to go, Alonso was 16th and in the elimination zone. Stroll looked safe, in 10th. It was then that Alonso ran wide into a corner, carrying too much speed and went off track into the gravel again, but managed to control the car enough to come into the pits to change tyres and go back out again and attempt a faster qualifying lap. But the front of the car was just not gripping enough and he bailed out of the lap. Alonso finished the round last but Stroll managed to get into Q2 – he was 13th. After his elimination it was revealed that Alonso's car wasn’t fully repaired from the crash but the team wanted to put the car out so he could set some times and collect more data for the team prior to the race. Furthermore, to help Alonso get out of the elimination zone, a minimum amount of fuel had been put in the car, so as to minimise carrying any excess weight. But as Alonso had gone off track on his fast lap, then had to come in for new tyres, there just wasn’t enough fuel in the car to set another fast lap and then a warm-down lap, so it was decided to just abort the lap. Stroll meanwhile, in Q2 didn’t manage to make it into the top 10 and finished 13th. Using Alonso’s words “It was one of those days where everything went a bit wrong”.
Prior to the race on Sunday the Team had worked on making more repairs to Alonso’s car and made additional setup changes after Qualifying, resulting in Alonso having to start the race from the pit lane. The team was also banking on there being an incident requiring the deployment of the safety car on this tight and narrow track, so they put soft compound tyres on his car. Stroll would start from 13th on the medium compound tyres. The gamble didn’t pay off for Alonso and the race got off to a clean start. Stroll had a good start, getting alongside Ocon and trying to battle it out side by side, even touching tyres, but Ocon maintained the position. By lap 4, both AM drivers were within DRS range of the cars in front of the, Stroll on Ocon, Alonso on Sargent. But due to the narrow track, short straights and only one DRS zone it was difficult to overtake. On lap 8 Alonso was called into the pits to exchange the soft tyres for a new set of hard tyres, meaning he came out last almost 30 seconds behind 19th placed Sargent. As he came back out one could see the brakes on his AMR24 on fire, but it extinguished as the car got up to speed. A couple of laps later, Albon came into pits for new tyres and as one of them had not been put on properly, the driver had to take the out lap very slowly before coming in again and having the wheel positioned correctly. This allowed Alonso through to get up to 19th. On the same lap Stroll finally managed to find a way past Ocon, to move up to 12th. From lap 14 several of the front runners came into the pits for fresh tyres, promoting Stroll up a place each time so that by lap 24 he had moved up to 7th. But as they came out on fresher tyres, Piastri, Russell and Hamilton were able to get their places back. Alonso also benefited from a couple of drivers pitting so that at the halfway stage, lap 32, Alonso was 16th and Stroll was 9th. A few laps later Zhou came into the pits, allowing Alonso to progress up to 15th. Finally, having made his medium tyres last for 38 laps, it was Stroll’s turn to come into the pits for new tyres and he came out 13th, with Alonso having to do the same 4 laps later and coming out 19th. On the fresher tyres Stroll was able to start progressing up the order, passing Bottas, then Riccardo on lap 44 and then Hulkenberg on lap 47 and into the points. He then set off in pursuit of Tsunoda just ahead. Curiously, on lap 44 Alonso posted the fastest lap of the race on his fresh tyres (It ended up being the 2nd fastest of the race in the end). By lap 50 Stroll was catching Tsunoda and was within half a second, eventually passing him on lap 51. On the next lap, it was Alonso’s turn to make use of his newfound speed and he overtook Sargent to move up to 18th. But it was to no avail as he had to come into the pits again on lap 61 and came out 20th. Both AM drivers maintained station until the end of the race, with Stroll finishing 9th and Alonso 19th after Albon retired his Williams on the last lap.
One has to mention the battle that ensued at the front. With 10 laps to go Norris in a McLaren was less than 3 seconds behind race leader Verstappen. With 5 laps to go Norris had managed to reduce the gap to 1.6 seconds and at the chequered flag, Verstappen won by only 0.725 of a second – the closest finish of the season so far.
How to sum up the race? I’ll leave it to the drivers and Team Principal to give their verdicts: “This weekend has been tough. We know we're not as competitive as we want to be, and we'll have to push hard to find the performance we're missing," said Stroll. "It was a difficult day and weekend in general for us. We will need to regroup and put ourselves in the best position in Monaco," were Alonso’s comments. And Mike Krack’s verdict was “the Imola weekend showed that we are still not competitive enough. Our focus is on extracting the full potential of the AMR24 for the races to come, starting next week in Monaco."
I will provide one personal observation – Lance Stroll finished just under 80 seconds after race winner Verstappen, which is more than a second a lap. Let’s hope the upgrades work better for the AMR24s in Monaco, the Blue Riband F1 race of the season and where I’m heading off to on Thursday, just a couple of days away.
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