Aston Martin's hopes of continuing its surprise run of success of 2023 took a bit of a hit on Friday in Baku, with technical problems in qualifying for this weekend's Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
While both Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll made through to the final round and will start Sunday's race in the top ten, it wasn't as strong a performance as they would have wanted.
Alonso will line up in sixth place on the grid, while Stroll will be in P9 for the start of the Grand Prix. Both drivers suffered from problems with their DRS activation during qualifying.
“I am satisfied with sixth position on the grid for Sunday after we lost a little bit of performance today with a DRS issue," Alonso reported.
"It’s very close between a number of teams, so we’ll need to try and be more consistent throughout the rest of the weekend."
“It was close out there today," agreed Stroll. "The car felt good and I had the confidence to push hard which is a huge benefit around a circuit like this.
"Unfortunately we were having intermittent DRS issues throughout the session, and I completely lost DRS on the pit straight during Q3," he added.
"It cost us a fair bit of time but we’ll be doing our best to solve the issue before running tomorrow."
"Both Fernando and Lance did well under challenging circumstances today," insisted Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack. "The single practice session was quite straightforward.
"But going into qualifying we experienced an ongoing DRS issue across both cars, which meant it was only working intermittently. Despite this costing us some performance, we progressed to Q3 quite comfortably.
"The team and drivers did a good job of managing a busy session with the yellow and red flags," he pointed out. "We had the potential to be a bit higher up the grid, but I think we are well placed to fight for points on Sunday.
"This is a circuit where overtaking is possible," he added. "Our attention now turns to Saturday and maximising the standalone Sprint event to pick up as many points as we can.”
Alonso was pleased with the new sprint race weekend format so far, which sees the removal of a redundant second practice on Saturday morning in favour of a new Sprint Showdown qualifying setting the grid for the afternoon Sprint.
"It’s a long weekend ahead of us and there are plenty of opportunities with this new format," Alonso said. "Hopefully we can make up some positions and perform well tomorrow in the Sprint.
"It’s exciting to know we are waking up tomorrow and jumping straight into the car for another qualifying session!"
"I enjoyed the new format today," Stroll said. "It was exciting to go straight into qualifying and it makes for a more interesting Friday.
"We know it’ll be a challenge to do it all again first thing tomorrow morning without running beforehand, but I’m looking forward to it.”
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