Alonso, Unyielding Against Aston Martin: "11th is Far More Than We Deserve"

Fernando Alonso holds a 'statu quo' within the Aston Martin team that possibly makes him the only one who can speak with such clarity. This does not mean he had a bad race; on the contrary, he believes it was his best performance of the year on a personal level.

In fact, Alonso considers it to be his best race of the year personally. "Personally, it has been one of my best races of the year, if not the best. The car today was meant to be in sixteenth or seventeenth place, and we managed to put it in ninth for almost the entire race and tenth at the start. We finished eleventh, eight-tenths from ninth and one-tenth from tenth, so it hurts immensely not to have scored any points by just one second," he succinctly analyzed before delivering a stinging remark: "The eleventh place is far more than we deserve."

Critical of their current situation, Alonso pointed to the high tire degradation suffered by Aston Martin. "This car eats up tires sliding through corners; we have no grip, so we have a good combo now in the car. We have almost no strong points, which makes races a bit difficult for us," he lamented.

Looking ahead to the next races after one where there was literally "nothing" positive to take away, Alonso urges his team to keep their heads down and push harder. "We have to keep fighting and, as we always say, in the next race we need to learn from this one and come back stronger and see if there is a response, some action, not always coming with the same car," demanded the Spaniard regarding future races.

Meanwhile, Carlos Sainz could not celebrate his 30th birthday from the Monza podium in his last Italian GP as a Ferrari driver. Although he admits that almost everything went well for him, he is also aware of the risk they took.

"We took a risk with the team; we didn't go for a one-stop strategy with both cars, and it worked, which is important. We managed to win the race in front of all the tifosi and with Charles. It's a very good moment for the team because we came from difficult races; we came with a new package that surely helped us win here," he highlighted. Everything was decided by the choice to make Leclerc stop once after benefiting from McLaren's internal struggle. Everything went well.

"Until lap 30, it wasn't clear what could be done," he conceded. "Now that we have a good car on Sunday and strategies seem better... I don't get tired of repeating it, but it's much easier to get strategy right when you have a good car," he noted. After leaving Italy, they face "two circuits where victory might be repeated," remarked a more than satisfied Sainz with his 4th place finish.