Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin, Singapore, 2024

Points at street tracks should not “hide” Aston Martin’s lack of pace – Alonso

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In the round-up: Fernando Alonso is cautious about Aston Martin’s current pace despite recent points

In brief

Points can’t “hide” our pace – Alonso

Despite finishing sixth and eighth in the last two grands prix in Baku and Singapore, Fernando Alonso is cautious that Aston Martin’s performance may have been flattered by the street tracks.

“The last two circuits, they were street circuits,” Alonso said. “We did good qualifying and then in the race it’s difficult to overtake.

“So we consolidated those positions in the race, but this cannot hide the lack of performance that we are seeing now in the last few events. So we are aware of that, the team is aware of that and is working flat out.”

Palou ‘among IndyCar’s greatest’ – Ganassi

Chip Ganassi says that 2024 IndyCar champion Alex Palou has already earned his place among the greatest drivers in the series’ history.

Palou won his third championship title in the last four seasons this year – all three achieved as a member of Ganassi’s team.

“To have a guy like Alex on your team, I mean, three championships in four years, I don’t know how many guys have three championships, not that many,” said Ganassi. “He’s in pretty rarefied air right now, as they say. His name has to be among and certainly in the conversation of the great drivers. He’s certainly in the conversation of the greatest.”

Thomas Bearman gets first F4 rookie podium

British F4 champion Deagen Fairclough secured win number 13 of the season, extending his own series record, in the first of four races to finish the championship at Brands Hatch as Thomas Bearman took a rookie podium finish in his second F4 event.

Fairclough converted pole position to lead by a comfortable margin over Hitech team mate Reza Seewooruthun until a late Safety Car bunched up the field. However, the race never restarted, with Fairclough finishing first for the 13th time this season.

Leo Robinson took victory in the second race of the day, a replacement race for a cancelled Silverstone race, after Bearman – younger brother of 2025 Haas F1 driver Oliver – started on pole. Bearman fell to tenth in the race, but that was still enough for him to earn third place in the rookie’s cup for his first single-seater trophy.

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Comment of the day

Ten years on from the tragic accident during the Japanese Grand Prix that resulted in the death of Marussia driver Jules Bianchi the next year, Jere believes there were too many close calls before that fateful day that should have prompted change…

Ultimately, the 1994 race close-call should’ve already served as a reminder and caused permanent precautionary actions regarding the sole usage of local yellows for recovery vehicle and marshal actions in run-off areas or even within track limits. And the coincidence of both 1994 and 2014 incidents happening at Dunlop corner is also haunting.

To add a few other similar close encounters, the 2007 European GP at the Nurburgring featured a multi-car pileup at turn one, with a recovery vehicle entering the run-off area and Lewis Hamilton even having a marginal touch with it, a little over seven years before. And then Adrian Sutil in the 2014 German GP after the last corner, albeit off-line, but still, only about two-and-a-quarter months before the eventual tragedy involving a vehicle. So race control had simply been playing with safety for too long, which inevitably backfired in the long-term, given people can’t be forever lucky that leaving things up to chance always worksout without a failure.
Jere

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On this day in motorsport

  • On this day in 1974 Helmuth Koinigg was killed in a crash during the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, while Emerson Fittipaldi won his second world championship by finishing fourth

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Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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10 comments on “Points at street tracks should not “hide” Aston Martin’s lack of pace – Alonso”

  1. I guess parts of a post can also receive a COTD nomination, but I’m perfectly okay with this & my main point is visible.
    However, I somehow failed to recall the 2003 Brazilian GP when thinking through different situations before clicking.
    Otherwise, I would’ve added it in the first place, & thus, I’m happy one reminded me of that.
    Anyway, the main point is relevant that FIA indeed left everything up to chance for too long instead of being precautionary, which was always going to end badly eventually if nothing changed since being lucky forever is simply impossible,
    Unfortunately, what happened in the 2014 Japanese GP was the outcome of this previous long-time thing of playing with safety regarding recovery vehicles & cars within striking distance under merely localized yellows.
    People in general clearly only start to change when a tragedy happens instead of before such a thing is still fully avoidable by simple matter-specific precautionary actions, which are always far from rocket science.

    1. Edit: I just noticed that my COTD-nominated portions feature an error here, which is Vitantonio Liuzzi, even though I typed ‘Hamilton even having a marginal touch with it’ which I remembered correctly but double-checked from the original article.
      The reference was that Hamilton after losing car control into T1, slid backwards towards the recovery vehicle & eventually stopped right beside it with the rear having a marginal contact at the full-stop moment.

      1. My mistake. I thought you were referring to when Liuzzi spun and lightly tapped the tractor after the Safety Car so edited that.

        1. Fair enough & equally valid, so I would’ve included originally if I recalled in time.

    2. @jerejj The other factor in Jules’ accident was that the rules for double yellow flags were not correctly enforced. The rules stated ‘slow down and be prepared to stop’, but in reality, drivers were only required to show a marginal lift and go 2 tenths slower than the previous lap. In wet conditions this can essentially still be flat out, and if you don’t push close to that limit then you will lose time to your rivals. If the rules were properly enforced then drivers would have been going much slower through that section and no one would have been in danger.

      1. Jonathan Parkin
        6th October 2024, 13:02

        I do remember in years past it was. The reason why Jacques Villeneuve was disqualified from the same race in 1997 was because he had had far too many warnings and eventually got hit with a race ban

      2. A very valid point made in the CotD @jerejj, and yes @keithedin, the FIA had become too lenient and satisfied “things worked” ignoring quite a few close calls that should have raised a red flag and might have lowered the risk had they been followed up apon.

        I do think that there currently is a solid degree of attention to avoiding that same mistake (although under Masi it seemed to be going the wrong way, giving into the “let the show go on” push), and still there were 2 races recently where it took far too long to get a VSC/SC/ enough flags out which might have ended up with a big crash.

      3. @keithedin Fully agreed. FIA indeed was never precise & clear with double yellow enforcement until the 2014 Japanese GP.
        However, even subsequently some situations arose that were somewhat ambiguous, such as Nico Rosberg’s 2016 Hungarian GP pole lap, even if he ultimately acted correctly by lifting off a lot to be safe for the yellow-affected mini sector & only returned to full push mode when caution ended, which coincidently happened even before he’d reached the following light panel, not to mention ever-improving track conditions meant he could still be outright fastest for both the entire lap & S2 alone despite heeding for the caution.

  2. What’s “iconic” about the only McLaren-Honda that Williams wiped the floor with? Odd choice of car – I always think of the 1988 one.

  3. the 1992 F1 winning McLaren Honda MP4/7A driven by Ayrton Senna

    Williams nuts like me will be quick to point out that all the MP4/7 was great at, particularly in “A” spec, was watching the rear wings of the FW14B’s disappear into the distance….

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