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Double DNFs for Both Drivers in Shanghai

After Australia, Formula 1 moved quickly north, for the Chinese Grand Prix, which would include the first Sprint race of the year. The Shanghai International Circuit presents a different racing environment to Albert Park in Melbourne, featuring long straights and a mix of sweeping corners and tight turns. It was going to be interesting to see how the new cars would adapt to this energy draining track. For Aston Martin, after a deeply troubled opening in Australia, the team arrived in China having had Honda work on isolating the battery from the vibration issues that had severely limited running, though the underlying power unit limitations remained. With no spare components available and reliability still a concern, both drivers approached the weekend with the clear objective of completing laps, gathering data and preserving the car wherever possible.

The sole practice session of the Sprint weekend was fragmented and offered limited opportunity for meaningful running. Stroll was the first of the Aston Martin drivers out on track but not for long - early disruption came when the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) was deployed due to there being debris at the final corner. No sooner was that cleared away, the session was restarted and Alonso had headed out, then a second VSC was required, when Lindblad stopped on track. Alonso returned to the pits with the clock counting down so that after 15 minutes both Aston Martins were at the foot of the timing screens, Stroll P20 and Alonso P21. Alonso came back out again after the VSC ended and put himself in P17. 5 minutes later Stroll joined the track and improved, getting himself to P19. Alonso, still circulating, got up to 15th place before they both went back into their respective garages. With continued short runs and both Aston Martins repeatedly being called to return to the garage, the drivers struggled to build a rhythm and the session never developed into a representative programme. At the chequered flag Alonso finished P18 and Stroll P20, underlining that Aston Martin remained firmly on the back foot. At the front Russell was P1, Antonelli P2 & Norris P3.

Stroll headed out first on track again but had his initial fast flying lap deleted, for exceeding track limits. With five minutes of SQ1 remaining he was still in P21, as Alonso, who had yet to set a time, headed onto the circuit. Even Alonso couldn’t make much of an impact and finished the round in P19, with Stroll right behind him, in P20, resulting in both Aston Martins being eliminated. Russell continued to dominate the rest of Sprint Qualifying, finishing P1 in SQ2 and ending up on pole for the Sprint race, followed by Antonelli in P2 and Norris, best of the rest, in P3. There was at least a small positive: the team had no reliability issues so far in China after finding a way to isolate the batteries from the engine vibration that had caused so many problems in pre-season testing and restricted miles in Australia. As Alonso noted afterwards, "We try to complete laps and improve on the chassis side. The engine is what it is. We don't have any more stock on the power-unit, so any problems could be very difficult for the rest of the weekend so we need to survive on reliability and learn as much as we can."

With Albon confined to starting from the pit lane, the Aston Martin pair moved up a slot to 18th & 19th for the start of the 19 lap Sprint – with Alonso fitted with new hard tyres. Off the start, those tyres hampered Alonso’s getaway and he was passed by Stroll, who had a solid launch – up to 16th on the first lap. At the front, the fans were treated to a series of cat & mouse battles. Antonelli had a poor start and was passed by Norris and Hamilton, who then passed Norris and went on to catch and pass Russell midway through the first lap. Before the end of it, Leclerc passed Norris. On the next lap Stroll was passed by Albon and Alonso passed Hulkenberg but on lap 3 Hulkenberg regained the place from Alonso so that it was Stroll in P17 & Alonso in P19. At the front it was Hamilton in P1, Russell P2 & Leclerc P3, with Russell then completing lap 3 in the lead, but Hamilton repassed a few corners later on lap 4. On lap 5, while Hamilton and Russell were still battling at the front, Stroll and Alonso appeared ‘settled’ in P18 and 19 respectively. That leadership battle was starting to take its toll on tyres, particularly on the Ferraris and tyre management began to influence the order. Leclerc passed Hamilton on lap 8 and at the halfway point Russell passed both the Ferrari drivers, while Alonso moved ahead of Stroll, but neither AM had the pace to challenge the cars ahead. On lap 13, the Safety Car was brought into action, triggered by Hülkenberg stopping off track, which created a mix up in the running order. While most of the field that had been on medium tyres pitted, Alonso, on hard tyres, was able to stay racing and moved up to P13, with Stroll rejoining in P18 after his stop. However, after the restart on lap 16 that gain was soon undone. Alonso dropped back through the field in the closing laps, had a brief battle with Albon for 16th place, but lost out, then traded positions with Stroll on the last lap and but ultimately finished P17 (Alonso) and P18 (Stroll), with Russell taking victory ahead of Leclerc and Hamilton.

Race Qualifying followed a similar pattern to Sprint Qualifying - Alonso and Stroll both got out on track early in Q1 but lacked pace from the outset, consistently lodged in the drop zone, running P17 and P19 respectively in the early phases. As the session progressed, neither driver was able to find improvement and both had fallen lower down the order, to P19 and P21 and below the cut-off point, heading into the final runs. At the chequered flag both Aston Martins were eliminated in Q1 - Alonso P19, Stroll P21 - alongside both Williams’ and both Cadillacs. Leclerc, Russell & Antonelli were the top 3 in that order. In Q2, Russell was setting the early pace, but he started to complain about his front wing, which had to get attended to by his mechanics in the garage. They just managed to get him out in time for him to be able to set a representative fast lap but when the chequered flag dropped it was Antonelli in P1, Leclerc in P2 & Russell in P3. Russell’s woes continued in Q3 when shortly after starting his lap he stopped on track and reported he'd got no battery. He managed to start his car but continued to feed information to his Mercedes pit wall that he's struggling with his gears – it looked like Russell couldn't get it out of first gear, but eventually he made his way back to the pits hoping for a quick fix. Meanwhile Antonelli went to the top, Leclerc was 2nd and Hamilton 3rd. At the sudden death though, Russell made his way out of the pit lane, hurtled round the Shanghai International Circuit and just made it around in time to start a final flying lap, securing P2 at the finish. Antonelli took his maiden race pole – the youngest ever Formula 1 driver ever to have done so, at the tender age of 19 years, 6 months & 18 days. The Ferraris of Hamilton and Leclerc locked out the second row and the McLarens of Piastri and Norris took 5 & 6.

As the grid formed for the start of the race the Aston Martin drivers discovered they would benefit from being promoted four places at lights out as issues for Norris, Piastri, Albon and Bortoleto meant they would not take the start – the McLaren pair for two completely different random electrical issues. Both Aston Martins were fitted with hard tyres, hoping to go deeper into the race and aim for a one-stop strategy. At the start Alonso made immediate progress, briefly climbing as high as P9 during the first lap, with Stroll in P16. At the front, the Ferraris had a great start again and were 1-2, before Antonelli got P2 back on the first lap. Hadjar had a huge spin and almost collected one of the RBs, but just avoided anything serious. Alonso’s early gain was short-lived - by lap two he had dropped to P12 and within the next few laps he was overtaken by Bearman and Hülkenberg so that he was running P14 by lap five. Stroll was still P16. Meanwhile, Antonelli had got P1 back from Hamilton at the end of lap 2. On lap 7 Bottas, who almost came together with his team mate, Perez, passed Alonso. As the race settled down, Stroll’s outing came to an abrupt end on lap 10 when he spun at the end of turn 1, ending up just off track and was unable to continue. This brought out the Safety Car. The subsequent investigation concluded that a battery issue brought Stroll's race to an end. Alonso chose to stay out on his hard tyres during the Safety Car period, while the drivers on mediums came in for fresh tyres, thus elevating himself to P11. Once Stroll's AMR26 had been picked up by a crane and removed the Safety Car came in at the end of lap 13 and the race got back underway with Antonelli, Colapinto & Ocon in the top three positions. However, the restart exposed the lack of performance available in Alonso’s AMR26 and he was quickly overtaken by multiple drivers — Lawson, Verstappen, Sainz, Hadjar and Bottas — and dropped back to P16 by lap 15. Towards the end of the next lap Perez passed Alonso after having made slight contact and Alonso became the last car running. At the front, Antonelli maintained his lead, with Hamilton and Leclerc in pursuit and an exciting battle between the two Ferraris and Russell ensued – Russell eventually grabbing P2 on lap 29. Alonso continued circulating but remained off the pace, also complaining that he was losing feeling in his hands due to the vibrations. (There was also TV footage of him taking his hands off the steering wheel going down the long straights to get some respite from the vibrations!) On lap 32 he came into the pits for fresh tyres and went out, but shortly afterwards he returned to the garage and retired the car, ending Aston Martin’s participation entirely. At the front the Ferraris and Russell continued to give the fans and TV viewers an excellent display of wheel-to-wheel racing but by lap 40 the order had settled down behind Antonelli, who kept well in control, with Russell ~7 seconds behind him and Hamilton in third. On lap 46 Verstappen was told to ‘box’ and retire his Red Bull, meaning there were three world champions out of the race; Alonso, Norris & Verstappen. Antonelli continued to control proceedings to the finish and took his maiden Formula One race victory, ahead of Russell and Hamilton, who would be on the podium for the first time in his Ferrari career. Both AMs were classified as DNF.

Shanghai clearly proved very challenging for Aston Martin and highlighted the gap between the green machines and the rest of the grid, including newcomers Cadillac, and while reliability had improved marginally, performance and drivability remained significant concerns. With both cars retiring once again, the team left Shanghai without points and with considerable work still required to make the AMR26 competitive. There are numerous reports circulating as to how furious Lawrence Stroll is as to where AM are this year and there is immense pressure from Sponsors, no doubt. Adrian Newey wasn’t present in China at all for the weekend and left it to Mike Krack to take the embarrassing questions from reporters and deflect some of the pressure off the drivers. After the race, Lance Stroll commented, "The car just switched off going into turn 1. We need to look into it, but suspect it was a battery-related issue. Overall, we've done more laps this weekend, collected more data and learned more about the car and the engine so that's a positive to take from China. We have lots of work ahead of us in all areas and need to push for improvements. It's not an easy time for the team, but we're all working together and there is a lot of potential to unlock." Alonso also tried to be upbeat, "I had fun at the start again and it seems this is a strong point of our car as we jumped up to P10. However, from about lap 20 I was struggling with the vibration levels, and we were already one lap down, so in the end we decided to retire the car. The vibrations seemed worse today than on any other day of the weekend, so we need to investigate why that was. It's clear we need more time to fix everything, but we'll go again in two weeks' time in Japan."

And that is where Formula One is heading next, to Suzuka in Japan for the weekend of 27th-29th March. After the race in China, it was announced that the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix would be cancelled and not replaced, which hopefully will give Aston Martin a 5-week gap during which they can seriously attempt to rejuvenate the AMR26s and their season.