Alonso stands up for Stroll: ‘Lacking good luck, but not pace’

While Alonso added a further two podium finishes to his impressive rostrum tally in Miami and Monaco - the latter of which marked Aston Martin’s best result of 2023 - Stroll has suffered back-to-back point-less races. 

It means that Alonso has scored 66 points more than Stroll across the opening six rounds of the campaign. 

Despite the clear gap between the teammates, two-time world champion Alonso insists Stroll isn’t “lacking any pace”. 

“He has been very unlucky the last two events,” Alonso said. 

“If we go back to Bahrain, driving with one hand [after an off-season injury] he was very fast. Then Jeddah he had the exhaust problem when he was in front of the Ferraris in P5.

“Then in Miami we were risking too much probably in Q1 [by using just one set of tyres] and that compromised the race. 

"In Monaco the debris from Lando’s car, the McLaren, completely compromised the whole weekend.”

Alonso also hit out at the media for taking advantage of Stroll’s misfortune with “easy” negative headlines. 

“Obviously this made the headlines very easy to be hard, but I think if you see the whole weekend even in Monaco in FP3 he was within one tenth and a half of the fastest,” he added. 

“He has provided the right feedback, info and strategy about everything. 

“So I really hope for him that he has a little more luck because I don’t think that he’s missing any pace. It’s just opportunistic moments that were not in his side.”

Stroll, whose best finish this year is a fourth place in Australia, is aiming to turn around his fortunes, starting at this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix. 

“Things happen in racing and we had some tough weekends,” he said.

“It’s just how it goes. There’s good weekends and bad weekends. Like every other weekend I’m just coming into this one trying to get the most out of it.”