Four double DNFs in fourteen races. That is not bad luck, that is a pattern, and Aston Martin’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend just added another entry to the list. Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll both failed to see the chequered flag in Baku, capping off a weekend the team would rather forget the moment the transporters leave the paddock.
Grid Penalties Before a Wheel Was Turned
Both cars started this one already compromised. Alonso and Stroll had taken grid penalties for fresh engine components, the sort of decision that tells you a team is already planning around a lost weekend rather than fighting for one. Alonso still managed to qualify 19th on the road, which sounds unremarkable until you remember it put him ahead of Cadillac‘s main representative, a team that finished last season with nothing and has spent this one battling Aston Martin for the title of least competitive outfit on the grid.
That Aston Martin can out-qualify Cadillac and still end up with zero points from the weekend tells you everything about where this team currently sits. It is not a competitiveness problem anymore, or not only one. It is a reliability and execution problem layered on top of a car that was never fast enough to begin with.
Stroll Out First, Told to Stop the Car
Stroll’s race ended at Turn 15 on Lap 7. The team called him in with what it described as a water pressure issue, and rather than risk turning a sensor warning into a burnt engine, Aston Martin pulled the plug early. Sensible, in isolation. Depressingly familiar, in context.
For a driver already sitting on zero points for the season, retiring seven laps into a race he’d taken a grid penalty to even start is about as bleak as a Saturday afternoon gets. There is no silver lining to spin here, no midfield scrap salvaged, just another blank result added to a campaign that has produced nothing but blanks.
Alonso’s Battle That Went Nowhere
Alonso at least gave the weekend a moment worth watching. He engaged in a proper scrap with Valtteri Bottas for position, the kind of wheel-to-wheel battle that reminds you why he’s still doing this at a stage of his career when most drivers would have long since taken the punditry job. It came to nothing. After the duel wrapped up, Alonso was called into the pits on Lap 21 and retired, the second half of Aston Martin’s double DNF and the team’s fourth of the season, following earlier ones in China, Barcelona and Italy.
Four times this year Aston Martin has sent both cars out and got neither of them home. That’s not misfortune striking twice by coincidence, that’s a team whose reliability has become as much of a story as its lack of pace.
Where This Leaves the Constructors’ Table
The standings make for grim reading regardless of what happened in Baku. Aston Martin sit on 3 points in the constructors’ championship, ahead of only Cadillac’s 0. Alonso has 3 points to his name from the season, Stroll has none at all. With Max Verstappen, Mercedes and the rest of the midfield fighting over meaningful positions, Aston Martin are fighting Cadillac for the wooden spoon, and even that battle isn’t going particularly well given Alonso’s qualifying position ahead of their rivals came to nothing once the lights went out.
The full grid for the race had already been reshuffled by penalties before a wheel was turned in anger. Aston Martin’s pair had their own penalties to absorb on top of everything else, which made Saturday’s damage limitation exercise even harder before it started.
A Team Running Out of Excuses
There’s a version of this story where a young, ambitious team is going through growing pains on the way to something better. Aston Martin have spent big, hired big, and promised big for years now, and the results keep arriving in the shape of retirements rather than results. Four double DNFs in fourteen races is not the mark of a team building toward anything. It’s the mark of a team that can’t currently be relied upon to get both cars to the finish line, regardless of where they’d have finished.
Alonso called out with a battle for position and nothing to show for it, Stroll stopped early with a water pressure warning nobody wanted to risk ignoring. That’s the whole story of Aston Martin’s weekend in Baku, and it’s becoming the whole story of their season.
