Fernando Alonso expressed his frustration after a missed opportunity during the Canadian Grand Prix qualifying, where he lost a two-tenths gap to secure pole position in just one corner.
Following several challenging race weekends with Aston Martin appearing to drop in the rankings, the team showed a stronger performance in Montreal. Alonso managed to qualify sixth, a mere 0.228 seconds behind Mercedes’ George Russell, who took pole position after a close Q3 battle with Max Verstappen.
The narrow gap between Russell and Alonso, which also included McLarens and Daniel Ricciardo, highlighted the intense competition. The tricky, damp track surface made it nearly impossible to achieve a perfect lap on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
Alonso found his qualifying result particularly painful because he lost his advantage in the very first corner of the 4.3km loop. ‘It was a tricky qualifying for everyone with the wind and the drops of rain. You always lose a little bit of confidence, and I think no one did a perfect lap,’ Alonso, a two-time F1 world champion, said. ‘It was the case for me as well. I didn’t put everything together in Q3, so when you see that you are only two tenths from pole position, it hurts a little bit.’
When explaining how he lost the time, Alonso said, ‘All in Turn 2. It was so oversteering, and I lost the car so badly that I was just thinking of aborting the lap or keeping going. I kept going, and I was P6, so if two tenths put you in pole position, maybe everything was already in one corner. I was just driving very aggressively after that to recover the lap.’
Despite the compromised lap, Alonso felt the weekend was a positive one overall for Aston Martin, which had anticipated a better performance. ‘I think we had a little bit of a full picture now of the car after the first nine races, so we were expecting a little bit better weekend here,’ he said. ‘Already on Friday, we felt a little bit more confident with the car. The last two events, we were out of Q1, so that was race over, basically. But now starting P6 and P9 for team-mate Lance Stroll, we have a chance to score points.’
Similar sentiments were echoed by McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, who narrowly missed out on pole themselves, qualifying third and fourth. ‘When you’re so close, you always think, could I have jumped in the car for that little bit more?’ Norris said.
Pole winner George Russell acknowledged the challenging conditions and track layout that made Montreal such a tough race. Piastri added, ‘There are a lot of people out there that can say they could have found three or four tenths. If you did a perfect lap, you could have been on pole by nearly half a second, so I am sure you will get that from pretty much everyone. Those excuses cancel each other out.’
The tight competition and tricky conditions in Montreal’s qualifying sessions left several drivers pondering what could have been, with Alonso’s early loss being a particularly tough pill to swallow. Despite the setback, the weekend showed promise for Aston Martin as they look ahead to the race.
Source: Motorsport
