Fernando Alonso qualified fourth for the Saudi Arabian GP, showing that the AMR24 is a great car on the single-lap pace. However, he still has some concerns regarding the long run.
Last week as well, Alonso did great on Friday during qualifying. Despite that, he only finished P9 in the race as Aston Martin struggled with tire degradation and wasn’t as fast as in the single-lap pace.
Therefore, Alonso is “concerned” ahead of the Grand Prix because he thinks he will have to defend rather than attack.
“We are surprised about the performance of this car over one lap. I think it’s not our natural position to be in the second row of the grid.
“We saw in Bahrain we were very strong in free practice and qualifying and then, in the race, we fell back to our more natural position – the fifth-fastest team behind McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull, and Mercedes. This was more or less the same story.
“We are ultra-competitive over one lap, and the car is responding well. But we are still very concerned about the race.”
Alonso still hopes to have a better race than he had in Bahrain, as the team tried to address the issues had last week with a few tweaks on the car.
“It seems this year that we are struggling on the long runs, on the race pace.
“So we made a few tweaks to the car on the set-up. And we will have the answer on Saturday night. But let’s hope to have a stronger race than Bahrain.”