Palmer: I really liked how Fernando caught up

Jolyon Palmer, a former Formula 1 driver and now an expert on the championship’s official website, analyzed some of the events of the first leg of the season, of which he thinks Fernando Alonso’s superb overtaking action is the most important.

Fernando Alonso has been waiting a decade for a car to fight at the front, and it looks like he may have got it in 2023. Since the start of pre-season testing, the Aston Martin team has been in great shape. On the first day of testing, Felipe Drugovic was first behind the wheel and in the afternoon I sat at the edge of the track and waited for Fernando to get to work. From the first lap the impression was that he was quite comfortable in the car and he attacked more aggressively than other drivers.

Ahead of the race weekend, it was believed that it was Aston Martin that increased the interest of all observers and the fears of the rivals, which only deepened after training sessions in which Alonso showed excellent results.

While it was confirmed in qualifying that the AMR23 was inferior to Red Bull and even Ferrari cars in terms of sheer speed, in testing everyone was talking primarily about Aston Martin’s race pace, and on Sunday we saw it.

Had Fernando’s car not been hooked by his partner Lance Stroll on the first lap of the race, the race might have been less interesting for the Spaniard. In reality, it was only better for us that he lost ground to Mercedes, as the Spaniard broke through to the podium very clearly. There would have been no incident in Turn 4, the race would have been more relaxed for Alonso, that’s for sure.

When I got the chance to fight him on the track, he always behaved differently from the rest of my rivals. Fernando is distinguished by an incredible ability to anticipate the development of racing situations, he has an excellently developed peripheral vision and when planning an important overtake, he knows how to calculate everything a few corners ahead.

Although he is already 41 years old, he showed exactly these qualities on Sunday. Initially without much trouble for George Russell, who began to suffer tire problems, then found himself chasing Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz – it was a battle that decided the fate of third.

However, on both successive overtakes he made unusual mistakes for him in Turn 4: he almost lost control of the rear of the car when he was fighting with Hamilton, and during the duel with Sainz he went too wide into the corner. , and everything can put an end to serious problems.

But Aston Martin works so well with tyres, and Fernando is so good at controlling the behavior of the car under braking, that he managed to keep his rivals close in all the slow corners of the middle sector of the circle and beat them. constantly threatened with overtaking. , and in turn 10 he made a decisive attack.

Hamilton did not expect Alonso to act this way, because in Formula 1 this place is usually not overtaken: if you brake and turn to load the car at the same time, the left front brake can easily get locked.

Alonso did a great job with the right lane at the entrance, allowing him to brake as efficiently as possible while the car was still moving in a straight line, then dove into the corner on the inside radius and the Mercedes on the right, and used DRS on the Exit.

He performed a similar maneuver against Sainz, but his compatriot, who plays for Ferrari, tried to deflect the attack, locking the wheels. Carlos chose a wider trajectory than Fernando, so he had to brake and turn the steering wheel at a greater angle to prevent the opponent from taking the inside radius, and this is always fraught with problems.

The Aston Martin driver swerved around the Ferrari on the exit of the corner, making full use of the slipstream and DRS, ultimately allowing him to take the podium.

I really liked how Fernando overtook because nowadays the racers rarely fight on the track in a classic way. It seems that modern circuits are increasingly designed for overtaking using DRS – they have very long straights and end in heavy braking zones, which are often followed by the next DRS zone.

Bahrain is no exception, but as the Aston Martin doesn’t have much top speed on the straights and Alonso made mistakes in Turn 4, he had to think outside the box. Because he knows how to do it, he put on a great show for us.

Can Alonso beat Leclerc?

The question of whether Fernando Charles Leclerc could impose a real fight in the fight for the podium is difficult to answer unequivocally. By the time the Ferrari driver’s car stopped at the side of the road, Alonso was 12 seconds behind him. In any case, he was able to overtake and outrun Sainz, then calmly finished third, although Carlos continued to attack until the end of the race, when Hamilton threatened him from behind.

There is no doubt that the Aston Martin car was faster in the race, and if Alonso hadn’t had a collision with a partner on the first lap, Alonso would have been easier to deal with rivals, even if Leclerc started on new soft tires.

The speed capabilities of the AMR23 are also confirmed by Lance Stroll’s result, as the Canadian’s first lap mistake was an accident and Aston Martin managed to avoid serious problems. Considering the fallout from recent injuries, it should be noted that Lance had a stoic race, finishing 6th.

The question is, what results can we expect from the team in the upcoming races? Was the success in Bahrain due to the specifics of the track? Sakhir, where there is a high rate of rubber degradation, definitely suited Aston Martin. On other circuits the Ferrari will of course go faster and the difficulties of working with rubber will be less apparent.

But at the very start of the season, the Silverstone team managed to lay an excellent foundation and if they continue to modernize the car effectively, it can be assumed that Alonso can win the race this year. However, one thing can already be said: in the years spent in the middle of the peloton, the two-time world champion has not lost his skill and still yearns for success.