Alonso Raced with an Interesting Upgrade on his Car

McLaren driver Fernando Alonso competed in the 2018 Austrian GP with a 2017-spec front wing. This meant that he was forced to do a pit lane start. But he clawed his way back to the front to eighth place.

The emergency change came after teammate Stoffel Vandoorne broke two front wings in practice. Alonso broke another in qualifying and the team ran out of new-spec wings ahead of Sunday’s race. According to parc ferme regulations, a change of wing specification between qualifying and the race is punished by a pit lane start. As a result, Alonso dropped from his 13th-place starting position to the very back of the field.

After fighting his way to eighth he admitted that he didn’t how the new front wing would perform ahead of the race.

“We didn’t know how the car was going to work, especially after we opted to put one of last year’s wings for the race,” he said. “We didn’t even know what flap angle to put on it, because this car had never run with this wing so we went a little bit blindsided into the race.”

While Alonso languished in 19th place in the first stint, the frustration was evident. He said, “I will not do 71 laps here”. Following the race’s conclusion, he said that tyre management was crucial to his performance. But he confessed that he could not comprehend the reason behind McLaren’s tyre advantage.

“I delivered the goods, as I said to the team on the radio. We started the race targeting a points finish and I delivered them. But it was a race not without many troubles, especially in the beginning when we were in the middle of a lot of traffic and we were completely stuck there because we were following six or seven cars that were all together.

“After the pit stops I think a lot of people started to have problems with rear tyre blisters, we didn’t and that’s what allowed us to move up the order in the last few laps. We have to understand why we didn’t suffer from blistering, if we did something different compared to the other teams because that was the key for coming through the field.”