Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack says Fernando Alonso was master of the elements at Zandvoort last weekend, as the two time world champion expertly managed tricky conditions to clinch his third runners-up spot of 2023.
Alonso started the Dutch Grand Prix from fifth but lost a spot in the chaos sparked by rain starting to fall on the first lap forcing the majority of drivers to make unscheduled early pit stop to switch from soft tyres to inters.
By the time the rain stopped and everyone was back on slicks, Alonso then suffered a slow second pit stop on lap 48 when a wheel gun failed, dropping him behind Ferrari's Carlos Sainz.
But a fired-up Alonso soon put that setback to rights and fought back to take third place. A subsequent second downpour saw Sergio Perez run off track, handing Alonso second place on the podium behind race winner Max Verstappen.
"We will win one race soon, we are getting closer" Alonso told the Aston Martin pt wall over the team radio after taking the chequered flag to put himself on the podium for the first time since Canada.
Krack said that Alonso's situational awareness and his vast race experience had been crucial to the way that he had made the best of the fast-changing inclement conditions on Sunday.
"He was in control all the time," Krack said. "He was always the master of the situation I would say, and this was key obviously also in such conditions to never go off.
"There were some situations where it was really about surviving which he managed," he continued. "You saw also in great style how fast he was in the first four or five races, to come back and pass two cars, it was just incredible."
Krack hopes that Sunday's success will help reset Alonso's season. A brilliant start to the year went off the boil after Canada with the team admitting it had gone the wrong way on development, but Krack insists they are back on track now.
"All July the lights were never off in the campus," Krack said. "We brought new parts here, we'll bring new parts again to the next races. We really want to try and keep fighting as much as we can in this battle and see where we end up.
"Obviously with the difficult conditions that we had [in Zandvoort] and the changing conditions the data analysis is also not an easy one," he noted. "But everything points in the right direction.
"You try to bring parts to the car," he added. "We made a small step in Spa, I think we made another one here, but we also need to confirm them over the next races."
"We have to see," Krack said, looking to the next race in Monza this weekend. "We worked quite hard now over the last weeks on our package in order to improve the straight line, to improve the DRS, so it should be a nice test."
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