Fernando Alonso likely departed Singapore on Monday morning with little regret after an uncharacteristically scrappy race at Marina Bay that the Aston Martin driver concluded well out of the points.
Alonso was Aston's sole representative on the grid in Sunday's race following the team's decision to sideline a sore Lance Stroll from the race after the Canadian's massive crash in qualifying.
Starting his evening P7, Alonso gained a spot at the start which he held until a Safety Car on lap 20 triggered a round of pits stops that saw the Spaniard fall back to P8.
Alonso progressed up the order but his second stop on lap 44 led to a lengthy delay due to a rear jack failure which, compounded with a five-second penalty for running wide at the pit lane entry – an untypical mistake by the F1 veteran – pushed the Aston driver to the back of the field.
Alonso's P15 finish at the end of the day was a far cry from what team and driver were expecting given Aston's strength this season on high downforce street circuits.
"I think we all expected a strong weekend in Singapore, it was not the case," said Alonso.
"We didn’t have the pace that we were hoping for. Too many things [went wrong]: a mistake going into the pit lane, a sloppy stop, traffic all in one race. So a race to forget."
©AstonMartin
But perhaps more worrying was the poor handling of Aston's AMR23 around the flood-lit streets of Singapore, and Alonso was vocal about the problem over his team's radio when he called his car "undriveable".
"We need to look at it because the car was very difficult to drive, very little rear end from the car," he said.
"We killed the tyres very quickly after the pit stop, so it was a tough race. We need to look at the details, obviously we don’t have the answers yet but we need to get better for Japan."
Aston team boss Mike Krack agreed that the Silverstone-based outfit needed to shed light on its underperformance.
"On the medium everything ran pretty solid," said Krack. "After the Safety Car we fitted the hard tyres and we struggled a bit more, we need to understand why.
"When the virtual [Safety Car] came, we were not sure that we could go the full distance with a decent level of performance."
After hitting the ground running and scoring a multitude of podiums in the first half of the season, Aston Martin has clearly regressed over the summer.
But Krack defended the team's overall track record this year.
"We have also had a couple of good ones," he said. "I think over a season with 23 races, and generally in sports you have ups and downs that’s normal.
"So we have to learn our lessons from this weekend, take the positives and move to Japan as quick as possible."
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