I was immensely fortunate to have been at the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix this weekend. The weather was sunny, but not too hot, the event was a sellout, with record attendance and the 2 drivers scoring the most points for the Team this season so far, just like they did last year. At that chaotic, 3 times red-flagged race, Alonso finished 3rd and on the podium, with Stroll 4th. The expectation wasn’t that high for this race, especially with Ferrari & McLaren both performing strongly, but the AMs put in credible performances.
After the races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the Free Practice sessions returned to normal, starting on Friday. The street circuit was dusty to begin with, and it was windy, catching out a few of the drivers, especially Alex Albon, who ended up in a wall after 20 minutes, requiring the session to be red-flagged. When the session resumed our own Fernando Alonso took a trip through a gravel runoff area, which required him to come into the garage to have the floor of the car changed, thus he ended up 18th. Stroll meanwhile, stayed out of trouble and recorded the 7th fastest time. Later that afternoon, the AMR24s had a much-improved session, Stroll being 4th fastest and Alonso 5th. The cars were testing out some of the upgrades that had been produced, including new front wing flaps and these were deemed to be improving their performance.
The consistency was maintained in the final Free Practice session the following day, with Alonso clocking the 6th fastest time, followed by Stroll in 9th. It started to feel that both AMs would get into the top 10 in Qualifying. In Q1, Alonso put in an impressive lap & was topping the timesheets with 8 minutes to go, so he was deemed ‘safe’ and not sent out again - he ended up 5th. Stroll also got himself safely into the next round of Qualifying (Q2) by finishing 10th. They did even better in Q2, with Alonso finishing 6th and Stroll putting in a really good last gasp final lap to finish 8th, which eliminated Hamilton from the final round of Qualifying (Q3). Frustratingly, none of the AM drivers had particularly good runs in Q3. Alonso ran off the track into the gravel, again, on his first run and had to abort his fast lap. The Team decided to keep Stroll in the pits during the initial runs and he completed his lap while the track was clear of traffic. He had to wrestle a snap of oversteer in one of the tight corners, which cost him precious time and he finished 9th. Alonso, with renewed damage to his floor, didn’t appear to have the full confidence in his car on his final fast lap and he finished 10th. Maybe not where they potentially could have been, especially after the better performance in Q2, but still, both in the top 10.
Sunday’s race day atmosphere held much anticipation from the partisan crowd for the McLaren driver Oscar Paistri, who is from Melbourne. The AM Team decided that they would split their tyre strategies between the 2 drivers, Alonso starting on the hard tyres and Stroll on the mediums. The start this year was clean, unlike last year, and although Stroll managed to gain a place, Alonso got passed by Hamilton, who was on the soft, grippier tyres. However, the main drama was to unfold right at the front when pole-sitter and race leader Max Verstappen reported an issue with his car’s right rear wheel. Not being able to go at full speed, Carlos Sainz passed Verstappen on lap 2 much to the delight of the Ferrari fans in the crowd. It seemed that we would really have a race on for a change. On lap 4 Verstappen’s issue became terminal when the brake discs in that wheel caught fire and he had to return to the garage, have the fire put out and, for the first time in 2 years, retire the car. With the all-dominating Red Bull driver out of contention, we now had a race on between the 2 Ferraris & McLarens.
On lap 8 the cars with medium cars started to come in for their pit stops, including Hamilton, followed by Stroll one lap later. After these initial pit stops, Alonso was running 4th and Stroll was 10th. It got better, by lap 15, with Norris & Perez coming in for new tyres, Alonso was elevated to 2nd and 2 laps later he led the race when Sainz came into the pits. Alonso’s brief lead was cut short when Hamilton reported an engine failure with his Mercedes and the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) system was deployed. Taking advantage of this, Alonso came into the pits to put on a fresh set of medium tyres, coming out 5th, with Stroll 8th. Alonso then stayed ahead of the remaining Red Bull, driven by Perez, who was creeping up on the Aston Martin with every lap, eventually passing him on lap 27. At the halfway stage of the 58-lap race, Alonso was 6th and Stroll was still 8th. By lap 32 however, the tyre degradation on Perez’s Red Bull was becoming evident and Alonso was back to within a second of Perez. And when Leclerc had emerged back onto the track after a pit stop, just a whisker in front of Perez, all 3 cars were within inches of each other. Perez had to come in on lap 36, moving Alonso up to 5th, 2 seconds behind Leclerc. Stroll came in for his final set of new tyres on lap 38, coming out 9th. Two laps later, Alonso moved up to 4th again, when Piastri came in for his tyre stop, but two laps after that Alonso had to come in for his final tyre stop. On lap 46, the order after all the pit stops was Alonso 6th, followed by Russell in the Mercedes, then Stroll. But Russell, on slightly fresher tyres, was catching Alonso but not managing to pass him. Then on lap 56, Russell tried to get really close to Alonso, in the twisty part of the circuit, only to seemingly overdo it and he slid off the track, crashed into a wall – his heavily-damaged car coming to a halt on its side on the racing line and bringing out another VSC.
The race finished under the VSC conditions, with a 1-2 victory for Ferrari Sainz & Leclerc, which we had not seen in a while. The Aston’s initially finished a season best 6th & 7th. After the race, however, the Stewards investigated Russell’s ‘accident’ and summoned both drivers, as there was a suggestion that Alonso had braked unnecessarily in the corners. They came to the conclusion that he had driven in an ‘extraordinary manner’ that had contributed to the accident and handed him a drive-through penalty, which, as this was post-race, converted to a 20-second penalty. With that time added on, it pushed him down to 8th place. Still, it was the best haul of points for the team so far this year and from a fan perspective we had also experienced the best race of the season far.
The team will now make the long journey back to base, only to turn around to head to Japan, where the next race will take place at Suzuka in two week's time.