Aston Martin finally has something to show the sponsors. Fernando Alonso brought the car home eighth in the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, the team’s first points since August, and on the surface that reads like progress. Scratch at it for more than a few seconds, though, and what you actually find is a team that got its tyre strategy wrong, got bailed out by two Safety Cars, and then had its driver spend the rest of the weekend needling the FIA about a red flag he thinks should never have been shown.
That’s the real story here. Not that Fernando Alonso is suddenly rapid again. He isn’t. It’s that Sepang handed Aston Martin a mess chaotic enough to hide their mistakes, and Alonso is sharp enough to know it.
A Points Finish Built on a Wrong Call
Alonso started P12 and, by his own admission, expected a quiet afternoon. His theory was straightforward: vulnerable on the straights early, no pace to claw places back later. Then the Sepang skies did what Sepang skies do, and his prediction was torn up before the first corner.
Where it gets interesting is the tyre choice. Aston Martin sent Alonso out on slicks for a start that turned out to still be wet, a decision shared with McLaren, Ferrari, Alpine, Audi, Cadillac and one Haas. It was the wrong call. Within laps the slick runners were being swallowed by cars on intermediates, Lance Stroll included, who cut his losses and switched almost immediately. Alonso stayed out, banking on a Safety Car to turn an expensive mistake into a free pit stop.
It worked. That’s the only reason anyone is talking about this result at all.
Grabbing the Gaps Left by Others
Alonso made it into the points by passing Arvid Lindblad just before the late Virtual Safety Car that escalated into a full Safety Car. From there, misfortune for others did the rest of the work: George Russell retired and Lando Norris had a mishap of his own, both shuffling Alonso up to P8, a position he then defended from Norris to the flag. An Aston Martin holding off a reigning champion-calibre McLaren is not something anyone predicted before the race, and it says more about the chaos of the afternoon than about Aston Martin’s underlying pace.
“I think it is the track. I think we’ve been more competitive this weekend in general, both cars in Q2, and today fighting in the midfield territory. So yeah, overall it was a better weekend.” – Fernando Alonso
Alonso was careful to frame it as a one-off rather than a turning point, pointing to Singapore as the next real test: “Let’s see if we can keep up this pace, especially in Singapore, where we have some hopes next weekend. And then there are some other weeks that we are very uncompetitive, and we have to accept it.”
Alonso’s Red Flag Sarcasm
If the points finish was the headline, Alonso’s running commentary on the FIA’s decision-making was the sharper story. The race had already been delayed by a storm, then disrupted further when several cars, including Lewis Hamilton’s, lost power during the formation laps because of a software issue. Race control brought out a red flag and reset the original grid, which meant Hamilton, who had slid almost to the back of the field after stopping, got to restart from P2 as though nothing had happened.
Alonso, who has retired from roughly half his races this season, was not having it. Speaking to the media at Sepang, he pointed out that Aston Martin’s breakdowns have never once stopped a Grand Prix on their behalf.
“I think I had 50 per cent DNFs this year. They never stopped the race for us. Yeah, that was quite strange!” – Fernando Alonso
He went further, suggesting he had the impression some of the stricken cars were effectively already out of the race, sat by the wall waiting for marshals to push them clear, the way his own car has been dealt with on plenty of Sundays this year. He said he wants the decision explained, presumably in Singapore, and added a dry observation about the sport leaning too heavily on technology that the paying public doesn’t actually appreciate.
Seven races remain, and if Aston Martin’s failure rate holds at the level Alonso describes, that is roughly three or four more retirements, and by his logic, that many more red flags that will apparently never materialise for his benefit.
Krack Admits the Strategy Was a Mistake
Aston Martin’s Chief Trackside Officer Mike Krack didn’t try to dress up the tyre call as clever thinking. He called it a mixed bag of decisions, some good, some not, and admitted the team needs to go through it properly.
“We then bailed out [of the slicks] with Lance, with Fernando we continued. We were just in the debrief, and he said it didn’t feel that bad until the intermediate runners came and just flew by.” – Mike Krack
Krack noted that roughly half the field made the same slick-tyre gamble and got it wrong, which is a reasonable defence right up until you remember the other half got it right. He was equally blunt that the Safety Cars did Aston Martin a favour they didn’t earn through pace.
“I think we were fortunate with the Safety Car to close up again, and then it started more going into a normal race. I think it was quite intense, quite interesting. A lot happened.” – Mike Krack
Krack also pushed back against reading too much into one decent weekend, name-checking the team’s recent form as a reality check: “I think, let’s not forget, three weeks ago we were in Madrid, one week ago we were in Baku, and we were just nowhere.” His conclusion was less a celebration than a shrug of relief: “For the team it’s great, because we have been really through tough times, and the few positive moments that you get you have to, I’m not saying celebrate like a World Championship party, but I think you need to take a breath and acknowledge when good results come your way, because we have not been fortunate enough to have many.”
What P8 Actually Proves
Aston Martin sit tenth in the constructors’ standings, Alonso has 7 points to his name for the season, and this single Sunday will not change the shape of the campaign. The team’s own Chief Trackside Officer is more interested in understanding why the strategy failed than in congratulating anyone for the fluke that saved it. That’s the most honest assessment anyone connected to Aston Martin offered all weekend, and it’s worth taking more seriously than the scoreline.
Hamilton’s recovery from that same chaotic Sunday has been covered in detail by RacingNews.Today’s breakdown of the telemetry behind his drive from P17 to P3, and the FIA’s own explanation for the software fault that triggered the red flag in the first place has been detailed in our breakdown of the Bahrain GP chaos. Alonso still wants his own explanation, and on current form, he’s entitled to ask for one.
