Despite bringing new upgrades for the F1 British GP weekend, Aston Martin will be waiting to see how things go on Saturday with Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll.
In FP1, the Aston Martin duo finished the session 11th and 12th, the team struggling to find the performance boost from the upgrades. Making changes to the car before FP2, Stroll took a step forward, finishing seventh. Alonso found himself 12th, but still can’t note the effect of the upgrades just yet.
“I think we need to have a little bit more time looking at the data. FP1 didn’t look too different compared to the two packages, so let’s see if we learn something more in FP2. We tried different set-ups now in FP2 to boost a little bit the new package and let’s see if we found something.”
Silverstone was an airfield before it became a racetrack, which opens it up to being incredibly windy, with the winds changing from lap to lap. With the high-speed flowing corners, one gust of wind can completely change a driver’s feeling in the car.
Alonso spoke about the wind.
“Yeah, very windy, same for everybody, but it was sometimes gusty and even on the straights you cannot keep the car straight. So yeah, it was a typical Silverstone Friday, but yeah, a lot to analyse and hopefully make the car faster tomorrow.”
Lance Stroll was quick to admit people can’t read into the FP2 results yet, but the car was feeling ‘decent’.
“I mean, it’s Friday, so we’ll see tomorrow.
“Yeah, I mean, early days, we’ll go through it and see how it’s looking. But yeah, some good laps in FP2. The car felt decent.”
Long runs
While drivers completed qualifying runs, they also took the opportunity to do some longer runs on the medium compound tyres. Alonso was asked about the performance in these runs, which he was hopeful regarding Aston’s tyre degradation.
“Everything was fine, the tyre was holding quite nicely as well. So that was good news I think in terms of degradation, it seems under control at the moment on Friday. As I said, a lot of things to analyse, but so far a clean day and let’s try to learn.”
Tyre degradation has been the key to winning in the previous round, and if Aston Martin can find a way to minimize theirs, they’re in the mix for the top 10.
