DHL FASTEST LAP AWARD

Fernando Alonso recovers from near crash to post the DHL Fastest Lap in Chinese GP

Fernando Alonso’s had a tough weekend in China, but the veteran kept battling right to the checkered flag in Sunday’s race. The prospect of the DHL Fastest Lap spurred him on in the final stint after his team’s tire strategy had made life rather difficult for him in the second half of the race.

Right from the start in China, Alonso found himself defending rather than attacking. Although the Aston Martin AMR24 is consistently fast in qualifying – which enabled Alonso to book third place on the grid in the sprint and in the Grand Prix – the tire wear is too high. Alonso already had to drive with one eye on the rear-view mirror in Saturday’s sprint race. His dogged defense resulted in a late collision.

In the Grand Prix itself, Alonso once again had to drive under constant pressure from his pursuers. Although he was able to move into second place at the start, the tires again failed to hold up. He quickly lost two positions and switched to the hard compound on lap 12 – a decision that would cost him dearly, because Aston Martin had only saved one set of hard tires for the race.

When the safety car came out on lap 23, this was the chance for his opponents to change to Hards and finish the race on them. Alonso, who only had Soft and Medium at his disposal, was unable to do so: “We had 35 laps left. Our calculations said that wasn’t possible.”

Alonso therefore had switch to a three-stop strategy. He first continued on Softs and then changed to Mediums on lap 43 for the final stint. This dropped him back to 12th place, but his tires were much better than those of the cars in front. Alonso knew this was his opportunity to make an impression, which he did by setting the DHL Fastest Lap in a time of 1:37.810.

Alonso pushed so hard that he almost flew off on lap 48 when he briefly ran over the gravel. Reflexes saved the former champion: “I almost crashed at the end, then I got the fastest lap and seventh place. All in all, a good weekend.” His team were pleased to have secured a P7 which vindicated their strategy and constituted excellent damage minimization. More than P6 had probably never been on the cards anyway.