Lance Stroll struggled for pace in qualifying, setting the slowest time after an interrupted weekend. Aston Martin’s pace has been underwhelming in Monza, with the Canadian complaining about low grip in the AMR23.
Felipe Drugovich spent Practice 1 in Stroll’s car as part of the team’s mandatory rookie session requirement.
Unfortunately for Stroll, reliability problems in FP2 gave him limited time to prepare for today’s qualifying session.
In a season where Alonso consistently outperforms his younger teammate, it was perhaps unsurprising to see the gap widen to eight-tenths in Q1.
When discussing today’s result with the media, the 24-year-old was candid about his struggles:
“Yeah, it was tricky. I just had no grip out there today. We’ve got to have a look at what was going on with the car.
“You approach it like any other session: try and get the most out of the car, build up to it and extract what you can out of it.
“Unfortunately, it was one of those sessions – I don’t know, just felt no grip in the car.”
Given that Alonso could only manage 10th overall, Aston Martin’s concerns before Monza have been validated.
The upgrades implemented in Zandvoort helped correct previous mistakes on the AMR23, but the team’s underlying weaknesses still remain.
A lack of straight-line speed is one of them, although the British outfit generally peaks in performance on race day.
Stroll further emphasised his difficult weekend so far:
“It was a tricky session on track. I just wasn’t feeling any grip from the tyres, so I couldn’t push where I needed to.
“I didn’t get a single lap yesterday during the first and second practice sessions, and while that didn’t help, I don’t think it was the cause of today’s result.
“We’ll regroup as a team this evening and look through the data to see if we can identify where things went wrong today.
“Tomorrow’s race will be tough. I’ve got a big job to do, but we’ll be prepared for anything that comes our way.”
Author: Jaden Diaz-Ndisang
