Alonso "pushed beyond the limits" in Jeddah despite disappointing qualifying result
Despite a disappointing result in qualifying at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso insisted that he pushed his car beyond the limit to extract everything.
After Aston Martin's performance in practice demonstrated the lack of competitiveness, it was not surprising to see Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll struggle for pace in qualifying.
The two-time F1 champion needed three sets of new soft tyres just to progress to Q2, but as he no longer had any fresh sets, he failed to progress.
"Jeddah is one of my favourite circuits and I think I achieved the maximum from the car with P13 in Qualifying. We managed to progress into Q2, but we used up all of our new Softs to get there, so it was always going to be difficult to progress any further than that.
"We have struggled again for performance this weekend and it could be a challenging race for us, but anything can happen on a street circuit like this."
“This is one of my favourite circuits, Even from the Alpine times, I've been super fast always in Jeddah. I think today I was pushing beyond the limits to reach Q2. And then in Q2, with a scrubbed set of tyres… again, another very, very good lap in my opinion – P13.
“It's hard because if I crash, everyone will blame my mistake. I'm not satisfied with the position we are in. You push beyond the limits to unlock some potential from the car," concluded the Spaniard.
His team-mate Lance Stroll was eliminated in the first qualifying segment, having ended up 16th on the grid.
"Qualifying was our most competitive session this weekend so far. We made some small progress, but we just didn’t have enough pace to get through to Q2, although the cut-off time was very tight.
"We did some set-up changes following the practice sessions yesterday and progressed a little bit, but the car is not easy to drive in the tricky conditions here and we still have plenty of areas to work on and improve. Tomorrow will be all about taking opportunities; we will see how it goes," said the Canadian.
Reflecting on Aston Martin's tough qualifying at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, team boss Andy Cowell praised his drivers Alonso and Stroll for having extracted the maximum of the car with tidy laps.
"We worked hard to unlock more performance from the car leading up to Qualifying, but it’s such a tight grid with a tenth of a second covering a couple of rows.
"Our session was well managed by the garage and the pit wall with both drivers delivering clean and tidy laps aided by good tyre preparation. There is a long race ahead of us tomorrow. We will come out ready to take any opportunity to progress and compete for points."
