Aston Martin has decided that Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll will start from the pit lane in Saturday’s Sprint in Brazil after changing the setup of their cars.
The team had to abandon their new floor design and go back to the one they used in Suzuka, but they still faced issues with speed during Sprint qualifying on Friday.
Both drivers were knocked out in the first qualifying session, with Alonso finishing 16th and Stroll in 19th, both more than 1.5 seconds slower than the leading McLaren.
Because of this, Aston Martin chose to change the setup of both cars, which broke the parc ferme rules and required them to start from the pit lane.
“Fernando and Lance will start today’s Sprint from the pit lane after the team opted to make set-up changes to both cars,” the team confirmed.
After not scoring any points in the last three races, Aston Martin team boss Mike Krack mentioned after the Mexican Grand Prix that some parts of the team’s new upgrade package were not functioning properly.
He explained, “You’ve seen, for example, the front wing stayed on, but other parts we could not keep.” However, going back to their Japanese floor design did not significantly improve the speed of the AMR24 on Friday in Brazil.
“We didn’t have the pace in Sprint qualifying,” Alonso said after failing to advance in qualifying. “We had to make some changes to the car after Free Practice 1 due to the bumpy track conditions, which we knew would be detrimental to our pace.”
“It’s going to be difficult to score points in the Sprint, so we have to keep ourselves focused on Sunday.”
Aston Martin isn’t the only team starting from the pit lane; Sauber is also changing the setup on Zhou Guanyu’s car after he qualified in 20th place.
After Sprint qualifying, Zhou mentioned it was not his day.
“FP1 showed that the track is very bumpy and that we’ll have to work hard to find the right setup. Sprint qualifying was quite a disappointing session for me as, unfortunately, the timing for our final run was mismanaged.
“By the time I was in a position to start the lap, the chequered flag was already out. While it’s frustrating since it ruined our starting position for tomorrow’s sprint, overtaking is possible, and we’ll see what we can do.
“As for now, we need to understand what went wrong today: tomorrow is a new day to make things better.”
