Aston Martin had a Friday of free practice marked by problems at the new Madrid circuit. Fernando Alonso finished FP2 in 17th, while Lance Stroll was only 20th, after both faced limitations during the session.
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Alonso’s main setback began still in FP1, when a clutch problem compromised preparation for the second session. The repair caused the Spaniard to lose about twenty minutes in FP2, leaving his program out of sync with the rest of the grid.
“It was about getting familiar with the new track today and working on some optimizations in the car setup. Unfortunately, we had a clutch problem at the end of FP1 and that left us with a slightly delayed start in FP2,” explained Alonso.
According to Pedro de la Rosa, team director, Alonso used medium and soft tires while the other drivers were doing runs with more fuel. The difference in programming ended up contributing to the Spaniard encountering traffic on his last lap.
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“Fernando was a bit out of sync, using medium and soft tires, when everyone else was doing runs with a lot of fuel, so he found some traffic on his last lap,” said De la Rosa. Stroll, in turn, was following the program normally until he suffered a suspected battery problem, ending FP2 earlier than expected.
The British team considered the first day of the Spanish Grand Prix weekend productive, due to the amount of data collected, but acknowledged they would have liked to provide more laps to both drivers. De la Rosa highlighted that, on a new street circuit, accumulating mileage is important to gain confidence before pushing the limit, while Alonso already pointed out another challenge for Saturday: “It will be complicated to get everything right tomorrow in qualifying, with traffic and battery management, but we will try to execute everything in the best possible way,” concluded the Spaniard.
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