Aston Martin has reflected on the brake issue Fernando Alonso encountered at the Chinese Grand Prix that led to his retirement from the race. Team Principal and CEO Andy Cowell has admitted ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix that the two-time champion was running a different brake duct to team-mate Lance Stroll, and this was responsible for the brake failure that forced the Spaniard out of the race just four laps in.
It’s been a tough season start for Alonso, who saw his brakes fail during the early laps of his Shanghai campaign.
“The brakes apparently were really hot since the beginning of the race, and then by Lap 3 or Lap 4 I went on the brakes in Turn 1 and the pedal went to the bottom of the chassis, and that was super scary,” Alonso said at the time.
“Luckily Turn 1 is a corner that you just downshift and go into the corner. If that happens in Turn 14 or wherever, I think it could be a massive crash because I would take four or five cars in front of me out of the race.
“For an unlucky situation I think we were lucky today to [not] hit any car in front of us, and now let’s try to understand what happened and try to see the first chequered flag in Japan.”
Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
Ahead of the Suzuka race, Aston Martin Team Principal Andy Cowell revealed the cause of the issue.
“The brake issue that we had on Fernando’s car, we had a different brake duct assembly on Fernando’s car compared with Lance’s,” Cowell explained to the media, including Motorsport.com. “Hindsight’s a marvellous thing, I think we all wish that we hadn’t done that. And it’s provided an opportunity to reflect on a broad range of things that we’re doing as a team.”
China extended what has been a frustrating start to the year for Alonso. The 43-year-old is yet to finish a Grand Prix, with him crashing out of the Australian season-opener in the wet conditions. Stroll, on the other hand, has managed to score points in both races, placing him in eighth in the standings with 10 points.
Cowell, who joined Aston Martin after a successful tenure at Mercedes, is looking at this issue as a learning experience.
“Yes, we want to try new things, it’s always important to experiment, but it’s also important to make sure that things are race-ready,” Cowell admitted. “And that all our systems are in place. So it’s provided a very good example to look in detail at the way we develop components, introduce them at race weekends, monitor things and looking at multiple system interactions.
“Often as an engineer, you look at one system and you say, yes that’s okay, that’s good to go, but what’s the interaction across with another system. So it’s provided some great learning for us.”
Alonso will be hoping to get some points on the board this weekend.
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