The main radio of Alonso and his team scoring at the Monaco GP

In hindsight or from the sofa at home it’s very easy to say what a team should have done at a decisive moment in a race full of uncertainty like Sunday’s in F1 Monaco GP. The appearance of rain is expected at any time during the latter part of the appointment, and it came with 27 laps to go. It started raining especially at Mirabeau alta and Loews, but the rest of the track was dry. This caused a lot of doubt as can be seen in the radio messages that Fernando Alonso and his engineer had at the main moment of the race. Alonso had to stop because his tires were damaged, but they had to decide whether to intermediate or continue on the dry compound. They don’t know if the rain will get stronger or stop. They bet dry and were able to stop him from trying to attack Max.

“In turns 7 and 8 it’s probably for intermediates, but in the rest of the circuit it’s dry. I don’t know, man”, commented Alonso on the radio when he asked his team before entering.

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“Okay, buddy. Get into these lap pits and we’ll use the resources”answered his engineer. “Okay, but see what the others are doing during the intermissions”, added Alonso, in case they had to change their plans. “It is not clear, it will not be easy. We will watch,” the wall concluded. What the team didn’t know was that it was starting to rain heavily and the wet area was impassable for dry conditions. They put on dry tires and Alonso had to stop again a lap later to put in the intermission, at the same turn as Max, who made sure that on that lap he touched the “wall three times” until he reached the pits. That was the lap where Fernando, if he had set the gap, could have overtaken the better tires.

The Asturian was second and had to stop because his hard tires were damaged. So is Max. Amazingly, Verstappen managed to stay on track, doubling the number of laps scheduled for the medium tyre.. The Dutchman said it was very difficult for him to drive with those tires but at Red Bull they were sure the rain would come. “If you stop now you will follow Alonso, I hope you understand the situation”, they told him at Red Bull. Red Bull decided to wait. Meanwhile, Aston Martin, with the greatest need to secure second place, decided to enter when it started to rain.

The biggest key: the destruction of Red Bull

The doubt is overwhelming. Put intermediates or dry tires? In retrospect, knowing that if Alonso had put the intermediates, he could have had options to push and get closer to Max Verstappen, or even fight with himbecause Max stayed another lap on the track, sliding hard on the asphalt in very complicated conditions. If Alonso had come in with intermediates, he might have caught it. Or maybe not.

Red Bull decided to wait and avoided the double stop. Maybe temper and strategy tables, or the habit of fighting for victories every week for years, made the difference. at that moment against a team like Aston Martin who still need to get used to it.

But undoubtedly, the most important factor is the performance of the energy-drinking car, which is more than Aston Martin’s decision to put the intermediates or not. Having a faster car that manages the tires better than Fernando. Why didn’t Alonso join Verstappen? The first reason is not Aston Martin’s decision not to fit intermediates. The main reason was that Max held a good lead for so many laps on the medium tyre.something unthinkable for any other car.

“I didn’t want to do a lot of laps in the medium. If it was a normal sunny day, I would have worked hard and waited for Alonso to stop. But I couldn’t because the rain was coming and if it had stopped, I would have been second.” said Max. “I had to double the laps we had planned with that medium tire and it was very difficult to balance because the tires were going. And then it rained. It was very slippery and made the right decision to choose the intermediates, which was not easy, but we survived”, he added. Max made it clear that Red Bull was in control of the situation at all times. He knew it was going to rain, he knew when he had to come in and he knew he had the car to hold the front until Alonso took the first step.

Krack: “It was a joint decision”

“We didn’t want to start like Max and that was something we decided before the race, to try something to get victory, but I don’t think we have enough speed to challenge Max, because we saw at the end that he controls everything and at some point you also have to finish the race and 2nd place is our best result in our short history and it was something that had What to get”, said Mike Krack, head of Aston Martin, on ‘DAZN F1’. And surely, that has to be second, it might also explain why those in green didn’t take too many risks.

“It was a joint decision. Our hard tires have had many laps and are suffering. So we knew we had to go in, and when we went in we saw that there was a little rain, but not enough in our opinion. It rained heavily andn the back but it hasn’t reached us yet so we took the medium because we thought it would dry quickly. But as soon as Fernando came out, he started to fall hard and it wasn’t on the radar. One more stop than planned, but it wouldn’t have changed anything,” added Mike, who was satisfied with second place. “Many opportunities will come”he assured.