{"id":155411,"date":"2025-06-03T18:01:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T18:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/155411\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T18:01:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T18:01:11","slug":"aston-martins-f1-issue-forcing-fernando-alonso-to-invent-overtakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/155411\/","title":{"rendered":"Aston Martin’s F1 issue forcing Fernando Alonso to \u201cinvent\u201d overtakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Fernando Alonso<\/a>\u2019s first Formula 1 season with Aston Martin, 2023, he claimed six podiums in the first eight races and was running third in the championship. The pickings have been more barren since then and in the Spanish Grand Prix \u2013 the ninth round of 2025 \u2013 he picked up his first points of the season.<\/p>\n

Lance Stroll<\/a> had scored all of Aston Martin\u2019s points until then \u2013 a humble 14, drawn from the first two rounds.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

Heads have already rolled in Aston\u2019s technical department last season and the AMR25 car has not started the season well, seeming to have a fundamental problem with race pace. Stroll\u2019s tendency to qualify poorly and then pick up positions partially masks a trend of the car being slower on Sundays than it is on Saturdays, though the only time this season he qualified inside the top 10 (at Imola) he finished 15th.<\/p>\n

Alonso, though, has reached Q3 three times and only just got a return in the form of two points (and it would have been one but for Max Verstappen<\/a>\u2019s penalty). A notable feature of the first and last rounds of this latest triple-header has been his tendency to overtake at unconventional points on the track, usually via a sneak attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lacked top speed, so on the straights we were losing a lot,\u201d he said in Barcelona. \u201cI didn’t make a single overtake under DRS. They were all made in Turn 3 on the outside, which is not a normal place to overtake, but we have to invent these kinds of moves.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso in Imola I was out of Turn 7 when I made three overtaking [moves] in the last few laps. So we need to solve this situation and start overtaking on the straight with the DRS like everyone [else] does.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Fernando <\/p>\n

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Zak Mauger \/ Motorsport Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to improve a little bit our straightline speed and also the [tyre] degradation. As I said, Saturdays are quite competitive and Sundays we seem to take a step back.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo happy for today for sure, first points, good Safety Car at the end, good timing and things. But if we go back on Thursday and we redo the weekend, we need to change something on the car to be a little bit more Sunday-biased than Saturday-.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alonso can be relied upon to highlight his own contributions to a result with the enthusiasm of a carnival barker. But both he and chief trackside officer Mike Krack alluded to the car being under-balanced, with too much understeer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s common for teams to set up their cars to have an understeer balance at circuits such as Barcelona because the rear axle is the critical one, and some understeer can help protect the rear tyres. But when asked by Motorsport.com if the problem was caused by dialling in too much understeer, Alonso\u2019s answer was an unequivocal \u201cno\u201d.<\/p>\n

Among Aston\u2019s challenges last year was that most of the performance upgrades added to the car didn\u2019t generate the expected result. While the AMR25 is the product of the previous design leadership, at Imola a new floor and bodywork package represented the first definitive output of the latest regime and the new wind tunnel.<\/p>\n

It was never going to be worth half a second a lap, but CEO and team principal Andy Cowell talked about it in terms of a lab experiment to enable to stress-test its tools and procedures.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s becoming apparent is that the car has a weak front end \u2013 i.e. understeery \u2013 but it isn\u2019t doing a great job of thermally managing its rear tyres either, and at the same time it is relatively drag-inefficient. The combination of slow straightline speed and indifferent tyre management is a killer on Sundays.<\/p>\n

Lack of aerodynamic efficiency is killing the AMR25 on two fronts: it\u2019s slow in a straight line, but the team can\u2019t just cut downforce because the car will slide more, making tyre performance worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe difference between the qualifying and the race is quite simple,\u201d said Krack after the Barcelona race.<\/p>\n

\"Fernando <\/p>\n

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Steven Tee \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cIn qualifying you put new tyres, new tyres, new tyres, new tyres. You mask a lot of the problems that the cars are having.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not only for our car, this is for all the cars. That is also why you see the small gaps in qualifying. Because all the weaknesses the cars are having are being covered by the new tyres, by the new rubber.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as the tyres become two laps, three laps, four laps old, the weaknesses become more and more. That is why you see that the cars in the front are just going. That is why the field is spreading so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noticeably, Aston Martin has been \u2018scrubbing\u2019 its race tyre sets \u2013 essentially giving them a short run, usually during practice, to put a heat cycle through them. The process of bringing the tyres up to working temperature and then cooling them again changes the visco-elastic properties of the rubber.<\/p>\n

It would be overly simplistic to say this improves grip and life characteristics on a linear scale, but there is a belief it can make the tyres less sensitive to graining and thermal degradation. Peak grip is lower, but the aim is to make the duration of the peak longer.<\/p>\n

Aston Martin\u2019s chief tyre performance engineer Jun Matsuzaki has been regarded as a key asset for many years and has been with the team since its Force India days, when he helped Sergio Perez<\/a> become a \u2018tyre whisperer\u2019. Before that he worked for Bridgestone. It was Matsuzaki who first worked out that Pirelli\u2019s rear tyres in 2013 could run longer stint lengths when mounted in the opposite direction they were designed to rotate.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s unlikely that Aston\u2019s performance deficit is being caused by not getting the best out of the tyres in terms of trackside operations. It\u2019s a question of mechanical and aerodynamic design.<\/p>\n

Alonso, for one, seems to believe the team now has a handle on the problem: \u201cI think we know what is happening\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

In this article<\/p>\n

Stuart Codling\n<\/p>\n

Formula 1\n<\/p>\n

Fernando Alonso\n<\/p>\n

Aston Martin Racing\n<\/p>\n

Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Fernando Alonso\u2019s first Formula 1 season with Aston Martin, 2023, he claimed six podiums in the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[971,4199,61562,6319,707,4200,27221,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-155411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-aston-martin-racing","9":"tag-f1","10":"tag-f1-spanish-grand-prix","11":"tag-fernando-alonso","12":"tag-formula-1","13":"tag-formula1","14":"tag-spanish-gp","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114620746206700249","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}