Fernando Alonso: Overtaking on the track was an adrenaline rush!

In the first race for Aston Martin, Fernando Alonso finished third to take the podium for the 99th time in his career, overtaking George Russell, Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz. The two-time Formula 1 champion is satisfied with how the season has started.

Fernando Alonso (3rd): “First of all I would like to congratulate my teammate Lance Stroll who just had surgery two weeks ago and battled everyone today. A great team result and a great weekend – I finished on the podium in the first race of the season. It’s incredible what Aston Martin has done this winter – we have the second best car in the first race. Simply unbelievable!

I would like to get ahead of the main rivals at the start and take advantage of the pace, but today I didn’t start in the best way so I had to overtake on the track. It added interest and adrenaline, but the fans loved it, as did I.

Let’s go to Jeddah now. Hopefully we will take advantage of the extra time to work in the wind tunnel. We won’t have much next year.”

Lance walk (6th): “Great day for our team, great start to the season! Fernando climbed to the podium and I’m very happy that I was able to recover from the injury and get back behind the wheel. It hurt me, but I held on because it was important for us to get more points, so everything is fine.

The past two weeks have been the craziest of my life as I fell off my bike at the most inopportune moment. At first the doctors said that maybe I could only start in Australia or even Baku, and there was little hope, but the doctors did an excellent job and I am very grateful to them. And all of our base team members deserve credit for building this incredible car.

After the start in the 4th corner, a very nasty situation arose when Fernando Lewis Hamilton counterattacked and there was contact between our machines. Luckily it worked for both of us and the race went really well after that.”