Fernando Alonso’s Dutch Grand Prix was shaped as much by safety car timing as by Aston Martin’s strategy. Starting from 10th, the Spaniard battled through a day where pit stop sequencing repeatedly went against him, eventually finishing eighth but leaving the paddock seething at missed opportunities.

Chief trackside officer Mike Krack admitted Alonso was incandescent after the chequered flag, saying the two-time world champion was “angry with the race, angry with the world, angry with us, angry with everybody.” The frustration stemmed from a sequence of pit stops that left Alonso repeatedly shuffled to the back of the pack, only for safety cars to hand his rivals cheaper stops and easier track position.

Alonso made a shoddy start to the race and was quickly engulfed by Alex Albon, Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Yuki Tsunoda. Stuck in DRS trains, the team decided on his first stop on lap 18 which dropped him deep into the field. Though he undercut Tsunoda, Lewis Hamilton’s crash brought out a safety car that allowed others to pit cheaply. By the time the order settled, Alonso was behind his own teammate Lance Stroll and Ferrari’s Oliver Bearman.

 

 

 

 

The Alonso yo-yo in Zandvoort

On the restart, Tsunoda mugged him, forcing Alonso into 13 laps of frustration before pushing his team for another stop. That second pit call again sent him to the back, but his two second a lap extra pace meant he was quickly at the back of the pack where he had previously been racing. The Spaniard pulled off some nice overtakes before race control deployed yet another safety car.

Despite his tyres now fading, Fernando elected to stay out for the handful of laps remaining in the race. This ultimately allowed him to salvage eighth, but the Spaniard felt his early stop had killed any chance of a bigger haul.

Krack defended the team’s calls. “Nothing we can do in these situations,” he said. “You have to take it as it is and find the best solution. When the rain eased, we thought we could undercut, like Lance did — and he gained a lot of positions by stopping early. But then you face tyre degradation and plank wear. We had to be conservative.”

Yuki Tsunoda battles throttle map error to salvage points at Dutch GP

 

 

 

Fernando rages over team radio

Aston Martin’s lack of Friday running added to the uncertainty. Stroll’s crash and Alonso’s limited laps meant the team had little data on wear rates, forcing it into safety-first calls. “You have to be legal after the race. We didn’t do a lot of laps on Friday, so we were in unknown territory,” Krack explained.

Fernando expressed his displeasure over team radio when the first of the safety cars were deployed. “F***ing luck we have, always. S**t. […] Ah, f***ing end of the race. F***ing lucky.” Later, he berated his engineer: “Think about the strategy. You forgot about me in the first half of the race. Maybe you remember I’m here in the second half.”

His temper repeatedly flared up during the race and when his engineer asked him about the balance of the car, he exploded again: “I don’t f***ing know. You put me always in f***ing traffic, I don’t know.”

It is not often one hears Alonso described as “angry with the world, us, and everybody,” but Krack may have stumbled onto the most accurate summary of the Spaniard’s default race-day setting. Safety cars have long been Alonso’s nemesis — either arriving too early, too late, or seemingly timed by cosmic spite. At Zandvoort, they once again combined with Aston Martin’s caution to turn a possible top-five into another afternoon of shaking heads.

Italian media turn on Lewis Hamilton

 

 

 

Aston Martin big step forward

The irony, of course, is that Alonso was not entirely wrong. The timing did destroy his race, yet Aston Martin’s own lack of preparation hardly helped. A team still lacking consistency found itself caught between risking it and playing it safe, choosing to play it safe at precisely the track where bravery is most rewarded. As Krack talked of plank wear and conservative approaches, one could almost hear Alonso muttering about points slipping through his fingers.

Eighth place is hardly disastrous, yet for Alonso it is a reminder that his Aston Martin project remains in limbo: fast enough to scrape good results, but rarely timed or executed to perfection. If Formula One races were decided by righteous indignation alone, he would already be leading the championship. To make matters worse, Alonso’s team mate started last, but finished ahead of the double world champion.

Yet Aston Martin have made a significant step forward with a new aerodynamic arrangement at the front of their cars. DR. Helmut Marko speculated it was the work of Adrian Newey who is supposed to be locked away with his pencil and easel busy scribbling new designs for 2026.

In Hungary before the summer break, Fernando and Lance qualified fifth and sixth respectively. In Zandvoort the Aston in the hands of Alonso was the quickest midfield car by far, whilst when Stroll wasn’t putting it in the wall, he too was quick.

Hadjar emerges as Verstappen’s next partner after shock podium

 

 

 

Correlation problems at Silverstone solved

Earlier this season Adrian Newey’s early assessment of the state of the art new facilitates in Silverstone was concerning. At his first outing with the team in Monaco, Newey revealed to assembled reporters: “I think it is fair to say that some of our tools are weak, particularly the driver in the loop simulator. It needs a lot of work because it’s not correlating at all at the moment, which is a fundamental research tool. Not having that is a limitation.

“But we’ve just got to work around it in the meantime and then sort out a plan to get it to where it needs to be. But that’s probably a two-year project in truth.”“I’m quite happy, and I feel the team is happy with all the upgrades we brought this year,” he concluded.

Well it appears the Newey magic has been working its way through Aston Martin’s systems and processes, given Alonso puts down the remarkable improvement in performance over the past two outings to improved correlation. “The Imola floor, the Silverstone floor, and the front wing at Spa – all three of them, they were just delivering exactly what we were hoping for, and what we saw in the wind tunnel. So the correlation is very good,” he explained on Thursday’s media day in Zandvoort.

Expectations for the future are high within the Silverstone based team. With Newey heading up all things technical within the team together with title winning Honda becoming their 2026 power unit supplier, there’s a remote hope for a final hurrah for the 44 year old Spaniard, that his two world championships could yet become three.

 

 

 

Hamilton’s disaster: Ferrari claim they know who is to blame

Ferrari ponder Hamilton’s Zandvoort crash – driver error or deeper problem? Lewis Hamilton’s weekend at the Dutch Grand Prix ended in dramatic and painful fashion. The Ferrari driver lost control on the steeply banked final corner at Zandvoort, spun into the barriers, and was forced to retire from the race. At first glance, it appeared to be a straightforward driver error, but Ferrari has chosen not to rush to judgment. Team principal Fred Vasseur has confirmed the Scuderia is conducting a detailed analysis of the incident to determine whether a mechanical issue contributed to Hamilton’s accident.

Hamilton himself immediately took responsibility, apologising over team radio in the moments after the crash. The 40 year old sounded despondent as he relayed, “I’m so sorry, guys,” to his engineers, echoing the words of many a driver who knows he has just undone a weekend of hard graft in an instant. For Ferrari, however, the incident raised enough questions to warrant further scrutiny, particularly as the conditions at the time were tricky, with drizzle making the circuit patchy and unpredictable…. READ MORE