Despite Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel being involved in the race for the top ten positions, the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team did not add to their 2021 points count at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
Pierre Gasly passed Lance Stroll for the final point of the race, despite the Canadian admitting he had the pace when it mattered in the battle with the Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda driver.
He also got into a battle with Fernando Alonso of the Alpine F1 Team, which saw him run off track at turn one after they collided, but he thought it was just a racing incident with the Spaniard.
“It is a bit frustrating not to get the point at the end,” admitted Stroll, who finished in the end just where he qualified in eleventh. “We fought hard with the AlphaTauri, but just did not have enough to get P10.
“We also raced hard against Fernando [Alonso] and the moment at Turn One was a racing incident: I braked deep into the corner and he was late on the brakes. We made some contact and he pushed me wide.”
Despite the points loss, Stroll believes the team has learned more about how to improve the car ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix weekend.
“This weekend has helped us continue to learn and improve the car,” added the Canadian. “We will keep pushing to unlock some more speed before Monaco.”
“I was running out of tyre life at the end” – Sebastian Vettel
Team-mate Vettel continues to strive for his first top ten finish since joining Aston Martin, with the German starting and finishing thirteenth.
Despite pitting twice throughout the afternoon, he admitted to having issues with tyre life, though he believes coming out behind Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN’s Kimi Räikkönen damaged him in the last stint and denied him a top 10 finish.
“It was quite a tricky afternoon, and I was running out of tyre life at the end, even though we went for the two-stop strategy,” said Vettel. “I made quite an early second stop and came out behind Kimi [Räikkönen], which I think hurt my tyres quite a lot.
“That is what made it difficult to fight for points. With hindsight, it is always easy to say what you would do differently, but it was difficult to fight the cars around me in the closing laps when they had a tyre advantage.”
The four-time World Champion is confident that the team will keep striving for improvement throughout the 2021 season, and with nineteen races remaining, he expects even more progress in the coming races.
“But we will keep working hard and we know there is a long season still ahead of us,” he said. “The new parts we had here helped, and we need to keep taking steps forward each weekend.”
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