Fernando Alonso, Alpine, Red Bull Ring, 2021

Aston Martin denies reports it approached Alonso

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In the round-up: Aston Martin says reports elsewhere claiming it attempted to sign Fernando Alonso are not correct.

In brief

Aston Martin did not approach Alonso for a 2022 seat

Reports in other publications claimed Aston Martin attempted to secure Alonso’s services in a meeting between team owner Lawrence Stroll and the Alpine driver’s manage Flavio Briatore. In response the team issued a denial yesterday.

“Lawrence Stroll did not offer a drive to Fernando Alonso, as has been reported in some media,” said a team spokesperson. “Lawrence had lunch with Flavio Briatore in Sardinia during the summer break. Lawrence and Flavio are friends. They have lunched together in Sardinia many times over many years. It was a social occasion, nothing more.”

Alpine recently confirmed Alonso will continue to drive for them in 2022, while Aston Martin is expected to retain Stroll’s son Lance alongside Sebastian Vettel.

Norris: Williams could have beaten McLaren to Q3 without red flags

Lando Norris, McLaren, Zandvoort, 2021
Norris missed Q3 for the first time this year
Lando Norris doubted whether Q3 would have been possible for him even without the red flags in Q2. “It would have been very tough,” said the McLaren driver. “I think compared to like 90 percent or at least most of the people in Q3, they were definitely quicker. Daniel [Ricciardo] has done a good job this weekend and in qualifying.

“It was just very close and very tight with everyone. Even like the Williams if they didn’t make their mistakes, they probably would have been extremely quick as well and made our life even tougher.

“I’m not comfortable enough to say, yes, I easily would have made it Q3 because I did a 10’4 for a reason and that was because we just weren’t quick enough to do a lot quicker at the time.”

Norris failed to reach Q3 for the first time this year. “Maybe I haven’t had the most confidence in the car, [unlike] in Spa or various other places we have been to,” he said. “I definitely think I could have improved, but not easily enough to say I one hundred percent would have been into Q3, so it was just tough.

“The field’s the tightest it’s ever been, we’re seeing a few like Alfa Romeo being so far up all of a sudden, there’s just a lot of cars which have taken a big step this weekend because of the track type or whatever it is. And maybe we’ve taken, not a step backwards, but we’re just not performing as well as what we normally do.”

Cohen and Ugran penalised after second Formula 3 race

Ido Cohen, who started the second Formula 3 race at Zandvoort on pole, has been given a grid drop of three places for Sunday’s race after he was found at fault for late-race contact that caused a puncture for title leader Dennis Hauger.

Filip Ugran has also been penalised, with 10 seconds added to his finishing race time for contact with Jonny Edgar. As a consequence of the penalty Ugran, who crossed the line 12th, will be classified 24th – one place ahead of Edgar.

Wolff accepts F1 must learn from Spa

Comment: F1 considering “options” for Spa ticket holders after call for refunds
Toto Wolff says he accepts the need for F1 to change its rules in light of the Belgian Grand Prix, having previously described the farcical one-lap event as a “freak day”.

Speaking at Zandvoort, Wolff conceded F1 had to reflect on what went wrong at Spa-Francorchamps. “I think there is a lot to learn from the Belgian Grand Prix because we need to tweak the regulations, we need to talk about the regulations that points are awarded for a race.”

Among the matters F1 should consider is whether it was correct to award points for an event in which no racing laps were completed. “I think we are all racers at heart, we want points to be given for racing,” said Wolff. “And I think in the future we just need to discuss in the F1 Commission whether a few laps behind the Safety Car is good enough for points or whether we actually want the cars racing.”

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Comment of the day

After Pierre Gasly‘s fourth place performance in qualifying at Zandvoort, Depailler suggests Sergio Perez may not be Max Verstappen’s most useful ally at the moment.

Gasly at AlphaTauri is a more effective number two than Perez right now.

I don’t think it would work for him if he went back but Red Bull should throw some serious cash at AlphaTauri to keep him in play. Although he can’t be involved in team orders, with a few extra tenths he could be hassling Bottas.
Depailler

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On this day in motorsport

  • 50 years ago today Peter Gethin scored his only win in the Italian Grand Prix, leading Ronnie Peterson, Francois Cevert, Mike Hailwood and Howden Ganley over the line at Monza covered by just 0.61 seconds

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Hazel Southwell
Hazel is a motorsport and automotive journalist with a particular interest in hybrid systems, electrification, batteries and new fuel technologies....

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24 comments on “Aston Martin denies reports it approached Alonso”

  1. I really enjoyed watching Gasly’s qualifying lap, the very first lap of qualy, after Gasly came out to track the coverage went all mission impossible. Really hard to appreciate f1 with this camera work.

    1. Typical F1 TV direction.
      The bigger problem for me is that the only two cars we ever get to see for more than 10 seconds are Hamilton’s and Verstappen’s. Doesn’t seem to matter who else is on the track – F1 is a two-horse race and nothing else is important enough to broadcast.

      Oh, except the crowd. Can’t have an F1 broadcast without lots of crowd shots….

      1. That seems extraordinary to me, in a session where we had multiple onboards and where the drone (or overhead) camera followed Latifi into the barrier. Maybe we were watching different world feeds.

        1. Almost every time that multiple cars were on push lap, we only ever followed one of those two.
          Maybe you just enjoy the broadcast that way? I just like to see all 20 cars, since there are actually that many of them…

          1. Do like I did: sign up for F1TV (and VPN).

      2. At least we got to follow some hot laps, unlike previous horrible messes, where they mostly picked up cars on out- or cool down laps.

        Q1 should mostly follow the bottom 5 cars, and so on. How difficult can it be?

        I agree the close-ups of a car is completely missing the point.

  2. Interesting that Kimi was meeting with Jost – I wonder if he was trying to get Kimi to have one more year in a Williams

    1. Interesting indeed.

    2. Well he almost drove for Williams after his comeback but he was then signed with Lotus. It was a very close call if I remember correctly

  3. I thought the story was that Lance was sent to give initial overtures to Alonso? Presumably so they could then use this denial and not have to lie.

  4. So as an italian I ended up learning years ago that if you deny something it means it’s not true, that’s the same everywhere except in f1, where if you deny something it’s true!

    1. @esploratore1
      And between Horner and Wolff, to ask whether one could possibly do some gamesmanship, ill-faith is automatically linked to the other because of the question in itself and the accused side concludes that his rival is the one who will certainly attempt or have already tried that gamesmanship, and they don’t even need to deny it!

    2. And if it is true, then what?

      1. Then you know it was not toto who told you.

  5. What?! The Ferrari drink on the podium has nothing to with the Ferrari F1 team? Never knew that.

  6. A wine that’s as crunchy as an apple? Has it been frozen…? Might make for a dull champagne spray.

  7. The AM case is somewhat contradictory as Seb joined on longer than a one-year deal, so nothing to announce unless his situation is the same as Alonso’s, i.e., 2-year deal in 1+1 form.

    1. Remember, there were rumours like this a few years back suggesting Alonso would head to Mercedes after Flavio and Toto were caught having lunch together. It’s just one of those crazy rumours I guess though it isn’t totally improbable if both Alonso and Aston Martin can benefit from it. F1 has a history of contract breakages.

  8. Re Alonso: Think he’s retiring at Alpine.
    Re Giedo tweet: 100%.

  9. Alonso moving across to Aston for 2022 wouldn’t make much sense especially when they offered him Vettel’s seat last year. Apparently he had Alpine and Aston offers for 2021. He also had talks with Red Bull prior to them signing Perez but that didn’t go anywhere.

  10. It’s Red Bull that should approach Alonso

  11. I wish the media would stop making such a big deal about the booing. Its not racist, its pantomime and part of “show” f1 has created. Schumacher was hated when he dominated. Vettel was booed when he won, even rosberg got booed when ruined Hamiltons races. Hamilton is being booed because he is dominating and people like to cheer the underdog. If max dominates the coming years he will no doubt get the same treatment eventually.

    1. Maybe van der Garde who conducted the media interview asked them to stop because he assumed the vast majority there wanted to hear what Hamilton had to say ?

    2. Point is I heard a lot of cheering for Lewis.
      Nobody seems to talk about that..
      But hey, media makes news. That’s the 2021 way.

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