Alonso hails British GP as “best race” of F1 2021 with P7 “on merit”

Alonso starred across the weekend at Silverstone as he went from 11th to fifth on the opening lap of Saturday’s sprint race.

The Spaniard ultimately qualified seventh, where he remained for the remainder of the 52-lap grand prix.

“It was good, it was enjoyable,” Alonso said after the race on Sunday. “The new format gave us the possibility to improve a little bit our quali position from Friday. Starting seventh, today, it was a better race, in a better group of cars. We could manage the position a little bit easier. Double points for the team, seventh and ninth. Happy for that. It’s the fifth consecutive race on the points. 

“The best one was Baku but it was a different race with the restart at the end. This was the best race so far, probably of the year. Seventh was on merit, not on luck or safety car or restarts so happy with the performance and happy with the car.”

Alonso spun on his way to the grid, damaging the diffuser in the process, while he tapped Daniel Ricciardo on the opening lap, resulting in slight front wing damage.

Explaining how these incidents affected his car, Alonso said: “It was not affecting too much. The car felt good in the race. I had very, very small damage that was not affecting the balance at all. Then, I think we touched with Daniel [Ricciardo] in Turn 4, the endplate of the front wing and that was losing a little bit as well. 

“Nothing that really affects the position, the performance or the balance of the car so I was lucky in that aspect.”

Alonso spent Saturday’s sprint race defending from Sebastian Vettel and it was a similar story a day later, fending off Lance Stroll in the second Aston Martin.

“I had a good train yesterday, I had 17 laps with Vettel behind yesterday and I had 52 with Lance behind today,” Alonso added. “I had a lot of green colours in my mirrors for two races. We kept them behind always. It was a good weekend, good fights. 

“It was better yesterday, today was a little bit more boring in terms of fights because we were too slow to compete with the top six but we were a little bit faster than the guys that we had behind. We just controlled the pace and the tyre management but I think we had more pace in hand that we didn’t use it but it wasn’t needed. Happy for this and looking forward to Budapest now.”