The start of the 2023 F1 season couldn’t have gone better for Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin. The Silverstone-based outfit was the big surprise ahead of the start of the campaign, but no one predicted them to be the second-fastest car in the opening round in Bahrain.
Among the many people who underestimated Aston Martin, were Mercedes’ trackside engineering chief Andrew Shovlin and the entire Silver Arrows squad. According to Shovlin, they were only concerned about what lay ahead of them in the previous season, and that was Red Bull and Ferrari. Alonso and Aston Martin’s pace came out of the syllabus for them.
Lewis Hamilton tried his best to defend Alonso’s AMR-23 in the closing stages, but his heroic effort went in vain. The two legendary drivers put up an epic duel, but the Spaniard got the better of his rival after a mind-blowing overtake at turn 10 of the Bahrain International Circuit.
Lewis Hamilton should have accepted defeat against Alonso
According to Shovlin, Mercedes’ data showed that Hamilton and his teammate George Russell were faster than Alonso. That is why, when the latter was on the seven-time world champion’s tail, the team did not ask him to back off.
Hamilton, being the incredible driver he is, kept his former McLaren partner at bay for over half a lap, but eventually, the W14’s pace gave up. In a YouTube video, Shovlin later claimed that if the team had accepted the fact that their car was slower than Aston Martin’s, they would have asked Hamilton to give up on the fight.
“As it happens Alonso had the faster car,” said Shovlin. “He was able to pass on track anyway. If we’d known that, we might have accepted that we would lose the position.”
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Could Hamilton have overtaken Carlos Sainz?
After overtaking Hamilton, Alonso had his eyes firmly set on his compatriot, Carlos Sainz. The Ferrari driver was struggling with tyre degradation throughout the race and could do little to hold on to the P3 position. Despite his best efforts, Alonso passed him and took home the final podium spot.
In the closing laps, Hamilton was narrowing the gap between himself and Sainz in P4. However, he could not get close enough as his tyres did not have the extra juice in them to make one final push.
As Shovlin said, if Hamilton had saved his tyres in the battle against Alonso, there was a chance he could have used it to pass Sainz, who was not having a good outing in Sakhir overall.
