Although the outcome was derived from downforce and chassis balance, the way it got there was randomised a little in the opening lap, mainly by Alonso’s team-mate Lance Stroll. He’d confounded the estimations of the medics in being able to race at all with his wrist injury and showed real grit in qualifying the Aston eighth, within 0.5sec of Alonso, having never driven it before the weekend. He got Russell around outside of Turn 1, having been held up by him off the line. But Russell came back at him on the outside approach to Turn 4 and was marginally ahead. Stroll went deep on the brakes on the inside attempting to retain the place – but just as he was doing this, Alonso was moving sharply across to take up his line and Stroll didn’t have enough stopping power left to avoid hitting the sister car, collecting a big opposite lock slide afterwards and re-passed on the outside by Russell who then dived across the track to make for the outside of Alonso.
The loss of Stroll’s momentum also saw Valtteri Bottas’s Alfa come past. The kickback through the steering as Stroll had hit the back of the other Aston sent pain searing through his damaged wrist and whether it was that or the emotion of possibly having ruined the whole team’s race which were responsible for the tears he said were in his eyes, we can only speculate. But the Aston Martin is clearly a strong car. That collision accounted for two of three bits of contact an Aston would have and it didn’t seem affected by any of them. Stroll picked off Bottas and Russell to go sixth and was closing Hamilton down as the chequer fell.
Ferrari suffered yet more reliability issues as Leclerc halted with engine trouble
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For his part, Alonso’s start had got him up to Turn 4 on the back of the Ferraris but Hamilton stormed down inside just as he was being hit up the rear by Stroll – and this knocked him enough offline that Russell was able to zap him where Turn 4 merges with 5. Alonso bided his time, using the Aston’s lower tyre deg to help put some aggressive and creative moves on Russell, Hamilton and Sainz. Bottas was no more than 1.6sec behind Russell’s seventh place and only just clear himself of Pierre Gasly’s Alpine and the Williams of Alex Albon.
The competitive order had shuffled out like that and it read Red Bull in big letters, Aston Martin in shiny ones, Ferrari’s blurry and those of Mercedes downright foggy.