Aston: Alonso win unlikely with early switch to inters

Aston Martin team boss Mike Krack says switching Fernando Alonso directly from hards to inters would have most likely not allowed the Spaniard to beat Max Verstappen in Monaco.

A light drizzle that covered part of the track between Casino Square and the Tunnel threatened to turn the race on its head as teams pondered whether to remain on slicks or switch to inters if conditions worsened.

Alonso was running second, a fair distance behind Verstappen, when Aston opted to bring the Spaniard in for a set of mediums.

That immediately proved to be the wrong call as the intensity of the rain increased. The Aston charger was back in the pitlane a lap later where his crews fitted his AMR23 with inters.

Krack elaborated on his team's rationale behind its first decision to go with the medium compound.

"We need to look at the whole thing, how it went,” he said. "Obviously, you try to stay out as long as you can in such conditions when you do not really know what's going to happen.

"We did not anticipate so much rain, to be honest. So we thought that it would just be a short shower, and drying quickly because the track was very hot.

"Then normally, you would say, okay, we stay out one more, two or three more laps, but the tyres were worn already quite a lot.

"And we saw the temperatures going down. So that was a bit of a risk. When the car came in then with this information, we said, okay, let's fit the mediums.

"But then when the car left, shortly after we saw that it was really a lot of rain. And we had to come back."

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Krack admitted that the team had been caught out by the increase in intensity of the rain.

"Honestly, we thought we could go to the end with the mediums because it will dry quickly," he added.

"But then we misjudged a bit that it was raining because in this part of the track [the pitlane] it took very long before it started to rain.

"And also this area, it rained the least. So probably that was a bit of a misjudgement, because we thought also that the inters would wear down massively in this part of the track.

"At the end of the day, it was a conscious decision to go on the mediums. And we saw then a lap later that it was not going to work. And we decided to call him back."

Despite the miscued call, Krack doubts that Also would have prevailed against Verstappen had Aston directly brough out a set of inters for the Spaniard.

"If we had fitted intermediates Max would have fitted intermediates as well. And also he had the gap. So I don't think it would have changed much," he said.

"I think overall we must not be too greedy, we should look back and see what were our objectives. We came here to do better than what we have done so far. I think this we managed. And I think the Red Bulls were a little bit too fast for us."

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