With its long straights Mexico City wasn’t expected to be a strong venue for Aston Martin, but a solid performance on Friday has given the Silverstone team and their power unit partner Honda some cause for optimism.
Fernando Alonso was P7 in FP1, and while the position was not necessarily representative given the raft of rookies in the field and the problems suffered by various drivers, the 1.229s margin to pacesetter Charles Leclerc was at least promising.
In FP2 Alonso slipped back to P12 in the overall classification, but he moved closer to the front on lap time with a margin of just 0.769 to Leclerc – a huge improvement given that earlier in the season the gap was measured in seconds.
The AMR26 was benchmarked as the seventh fastest car, and the conclusion has to be that the package has thus far coped well with the challenges created by the high altitude in Mexico City.
The downside was a difficult day for the other car, with Jak Crawford stopping on track in FP1 and Lance Stroll playing catch-up in FP2.
Alonso admitted that so far the performance has exceeded expectations.
“Probably yes,” he said, when asked the question. “I was very open-minded coming to the weekend because Mexico is such a unique place with altitude and things, that I thought maybe we have a good surprise.
“At the moment at least on my side of the garage, the car is working well. I think Lance’s car has some issues that they need to check for tomorrow.
“But part of the normal challenges in Mexico, with altitude, turbo speed, temperature, brakes, all these kinds of things that are a little bit on the limit. Apart from that, there are no big concerns into tomorrow.”
Alonso downplayed the challenge of low downforce levels: “No big difference, to be honest. We were all worrying about the lack of downforce this year compared to previous events, but I think the car feels very similar to the last few years here. So it was not an extra challenge, I would say.”
Aston Martin’s Pedro de la Rosa suggested that the car is working well in the track’s many slow corners.
“It’s fair to say it’s slightly better than expected,” he noted. “Especially because I think probably the fact that there’s a lot of low-speed component in this track, Sector 1, [Turns] 1, 2, 3, and 4, 5, 6 are very slow speed.
“Then you have the last sector, which is only mainly low-speed corners, second or first gear corners, which I think just makes us look a bit stronger. But anyway, it’s still a challenge. Mexico will always be a challenge on temperatures, on the engine, on the braking. So we just have to manage that as well.”
Asked if the track could play to the strengths of an experienced driver like Alonso, de la Rosa added: “I think that from a physical point of view, there’s no issues. So you have a long straight to actually catch up. There’s not a lot of G forces. Also, the downforce you generate is quite low, because of the air density.
“But I think the fact that you are driving a car with very little downforce makes experienced drivers adapt faster. Also the fact that we have now two different sectors regarding asphalt means the drivers have to adapt a bit. You can push more on the last sector because there’s more grip than on the first sector, which is the old asphalt.”
De la Rosa suggested that it was a good day on the power unit side.
“On the turbo lag, we haven’t had many complaints from the drivers, which is positive,” he said. “So I think that Honda has done a very good job on the turbo lag, and minimising that effect.
“It’s always an underlying factor, especially in a circuit like this at 2,200 metres. But it is mostly that we will have to manage engine cooling, brake cooling at a place like this. I think it’s an overriding factor, rather than the turbo lag.”
