In a parallel universe Fernando Alonso has won his 33rd victory after taking the chequered flag at the Monaco Grand Prix in a fairytale finish for Aston Martin in the least predictable weekend of the Formula 1 season to date.
But in reality Monte Carlo ended with Max Verstappen standing atop the podium for the 38th time and probably the sport’s best hope of a non-Red Bull Racing winner this season dashed in the spray of a late-race rain shower.
The difference between these two worlds is a single decision made with 24 laps to go.
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On pure pace in qualifying and in the race the Red Bull Racing car was fastest, but not by enough to keep Aston Martin out of reach.
With the right strategy and the right timing Alonso could still have won.
Having concluded that the run to the first corner was too short to deprive Verstappen of the lead, the team figured it could create more opportunities by running deep into the race, when a safety car or a weather interruption could hand it the advantage.
Starting on the hard tyre with its immense longevity was his best bet.
Lo and behold, exactly that situation loomed on the horizon at around lap 50, when the first drops of rain began to fall in Monaco.
The window of opportunity was opening.
But Alonso and his pit wall were indecisive over team radio. The Spaniard noted that the top part of the track was very wet but the bottom was dry. He said he wasn’t sure what tyre would be best.
In the end the team made the call: it would be mediums — slick dry-weather tyres.
He was called in at the end of lap 54 of 78.
Immediately it turned out to be wrong. The track was so wet on his out-lap that Alonso had to make a second stop to switch to intermediates, which put paid to his chances of winning the race.
Verstappen, on the other hand, was able to switch directly to intermediates, earning a massive 20-second advantage that won him the race.
“We did not anticipate so much rain, to be honest,” team boss Mike Krack said. “We thought that it would just be a short shower and dry quickly because the track was very hot.
“When the car came in with this information we said, ‘Okay, let‘s fit the mediums’ but then when the car left … we saw there was really a lot of rain and we had to come back.
“These calls are made in very short amount of time, and then you have to live with it. When you have decided, you have to execute, because otherwise you have two wets and two slicks on the car.
“Once you have made the call, you have to execute.”
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THE EVIDENCE THE TEAM DIDN’T HEED
They say even a wrong decision is better than indecision, but Aston Martin should have had the data it needed to make the call.
Its own driver Lance Stroll had pitted for intermediates a lap before Alonso. In the first sector he was almost a second quicker than leader Verstappen, and by the end of the lap he’d gained 6.757 seconds on the Dutchman just thanks to his fresh rubber.
When Alonso entered pit lane he was 8.1 seconds behind Verstappen.
On paper that doesn’t appear to be quite enough — around 0.7 seconds would still be missing — but the track was getting wetter all the time, which means the inters would have been getting increasingly faster with very passing minute.
Esteban Ocon has the evidence.
Ocon pitted for intermediates on the same lap Alonso pitted for mediums and the Frenchman gained almost 17 seconds on leader Verstappen by the time the Dutchman completed his stop.
Had Alonso switched to intermediates and made even similar gains, he’d have emerged with a comfortable lead.
And even if he hadn’t got the full 17 seconds — even if he had only rejoined right behind Verstappen — the Red Bull Racing driver wasn’t driving at his best.
Verstappen was turning in a rare slightly scrappy display, banging walls, locking up and sliding wide in an RB19 that simply wasn’t made for this track.
The leader vulnerable, and the situation was prime for a pursuing driver to apply pressure — and there’s no driver capable of asking questions and probing defences as aggressively and resolutely as Fernando Alonso.
So not only did Aston Martin’s strategy lack clarity, it also didn’t lean on Alonso’s ability behind the wheel.
There’s also the simple argument that Aston Martin had taken the gamble to start on the hard tyre to capitalise precisely on this sort of situation. To not risk the intermediate tyre, even if the balance of probabilities suggested the track wasn’t ready for it, seems almost wasteful.
“I was surprised they took the medium tyre,” Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner said. “That totally got us off the hook.”
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SO WHY DID ASTON MISS THE SIGNS?
The team’s first issue was that it felt compelled to stop as soon as possible given the age of Alonso’s tyres.
At more than 50 laps old, there wasn’t a lot of tread left on the carcass, and as the track cooled rapidly, so too did the rubber — which is a particular hazard in these conditions.
“Normally we say, ‘Okay, we stay out one or two or three more laps’, but the tyres were worn already quite a lot and we saw the temperatures going down, so that was a bit of a risk,” Krack said.
The team also didn’t want to lose the initiative to Verstappen, who just as easily could have been the first one into the pits for new tyres — though making that sort of call as the race leader is always more difficult given how much there is to lose.
There was also some pure luck involved. Had the rain barrelled over the hills a minute earlier, or had the race started a minute later, or had the race pace been a minute slower up that point, the decision may well have been crystal clear rather than still emerging from a murky forecast that wasn’t sure whether the rain was coming or going.
“Maybe it was extra safe, I don‘t know,” Alonso admitted. “But that minute and a half that it took to go through turns 5, 6, 7 and 8 again, it changed completely.
“The out-lap on the dry tyres, it was very wet when I go to those corners, but the lap that we stopped, it was completely dry.
“If it stopped raining or it only rains in those three corners for five minutes, then you’ve made the right choice.”
Finally, there’s also a hint of conservatism in the decision-making process despite Alonso’s protestations that the approach had been for maximum aggression.
The decision to take new slicks was made knowing the gap back to Ocon was so large that another stop could be taken without Alonso losing second place. Even if the odds of victory with the mediums were slim, the worse-case scenario was the status quo.
“We had huge margin behind to do two stops if needed, one for the dries and one extra for the inters, and we thought it was the right thing,” Alonso said. “We are P2, so we are very happy — very happy — with the race, because the P1 was very fast today.”
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LESSONS WILL BE LEARNT
Aston Martin is still enjoying the honeymoon phase of its massive step forward on the grid. It didn’t expect to be competing for consistent podiums or having shots at victory, so every trophy Alonso brings homes must still feel like a bit of a bonus.
It also helps — ironically — that Red Bull Racing is usually so far up the road that there are very few chances genuinely missed.
But there’s no doubt the team will reflect on this result on Monday and learn lessons from it, even if it can explain away its decision-making by a combination of bad luck and bad timing.
In a dogfight with the likes of Red Bull Racing or any other established frontrunner, it has to be progressive with its strategies to place the opposition under pressure and force a mistake.
Sometimes that will come with self-harming mistakes, but the alternative is to never venture.
It’s difficult to imagine, if the positions had been reversed, Red Bull Racing not opting for the riskier but more aggressive approach to turn the screws on Aston Martin.
It’s always tough to be critical of the pit wall of any team given the strategy department is making big calls sometimes with only a few seconds of notice and almost always with incomplete information. Monaco is also the most difficult circuit to navigate given its layout.
You can’t deny second place is another strong result for Alonso and Aston Martin. But it’s one step short of the goal.
“I think we were right in our assessment that we would have a chance [to win], the ultimate pace to be in the game,” Krack said. “What we take away is that we have achieved here our best result of the season in terms of absolute position. And we take away that we have to work hard to close the gap further to Red Bull.”
That gap exists in more than just pace at the moment. But hopefully for us, the team is set for a lot more practice this season.
