HONDA The Power of Dreams

Sprint Retired|Lap 15

Qualifying|P19|1 min 15.196s

Sprint|P16

Qualifying|P21|1 min 16.195s

The Canadian Grand Prix Sprint took place at 12:00 local time on Saturday, May 23.

During Friday’s Sprint Qualifying, Fernando Alonso of the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team (AMAF1) advanced to SQ2 after finishing 16th in SQ1. However, on his final SQ1 run, Alonso ran off track and hit the barrier, preventing him from taking part in SQ2. Lance Stroll was unable to improve on his final run and finished 18th.

For the 23-lap Sprint, Alonso started on medium tires, while Stroll started from the pit lane following an issue with the front suspension before the race. Alonso sustained damage after contact with another car during the opening-lap battles. Although he climbed as high as P14, his pace later dropped and he lost positions before pitting for tires. He returned to the track but soon pitted again and retired from the Sprint. Stroll started on soft tires and completed the race without issue, finishing in P16.

Qualifying began at 4:00 pm local time under cloudy skies, with an air temperature of 21°C and track temperature of 31°C.

During the 18-minute Q1 session, Alonso and Stroll each completed two runs using two sets of new tires. Alonso completed two push laps on his second set, improving each time and eventually setting a best lap of 1 min 15.196s. Stroll also improved to 1 min 16.195s on his second set before aborting his third run and returning to the pits.

The final Q1 classification saw Alonso finish P19 and Stroll P21, with both drivers eliminated in Q1.

“Unfortunately I locked up the fronts into Turn 3 and I was a passenger. We were fighting above our expectations before that incident. We’ll see what we can learn tomorrow with the Sprint and another Qualifying session.”

“I always enjoy driving here in Canada and I have felt a little bit more competitive this weekend. There are some small steps for us in the right direction, but we still need more performance to get through to Q2.

“In the Sprint race, we had some contact into Turn 1 and in the end, we retired the car.

“If it does rain tomorrow, it will be interesting as we haven't run in wet conditions with these new regulations, and the grip levels here will be very low. It will be a demanding race for everyone, but let's see what we can do.”

“We did what we could to get out for one final lap after the Red Flag, but the tires were too cold after sitting in the pitlane and we couldn't improve the lap time. That's just how it goes sometimes. We'll go through the data, see where we can improve and hopefully make some progress tomorrow."

“It's been a tough day. We started from the pitlane after finding a suspension issue on the grid this morning, so that compromised things straight away for the Sprint Race.

“In Qualifying, I just didn't have confidence in the car because of the lack of grip, which made it difficult to really push.

“Rain is expected tomorrow, so that could mix things up a bit and maybe help the lower downforce cars.”

“A busy day in Montréal. The drivers gave it everything to extract as much performance as they could, but the results reflect our performance level right now. Our battle tomorrow will be with the Cadillacs.

“It was not a straightforward day operationally with several issues holding us back. That's an area where we must improve going forward.

“Let's see what tomorrow brings: the weather forecast suggests wet conditions, which might open up some opportunities for us.”

“We have two main objectives for the Canadian Grand Prix. One is to optimize energy management and the second is to improve driveability, working alongside HRC Sakura. Energy management-wise, we optimized this through today's sessions. We started from a conservative setting, based on our simulations, then we found some improvement points to adjust to. We had no issues in the practice session or Sprint qualifying, and we've found some positive driveability signs on our data. It's still not enough, but we will keep adjusting now that we've confirmed the direction to go in.”

“We haven’t had any major power unit issues in today’s Sprint race and qualifying. We learnt items on the energy management and driveability sides at this new track, mainly on the torque delivery. After the Sprint we updated our mapping and made changes to driveability for qualifying.

“For tomorrow, there is a high possibility for wet conditions, and we are interested to see how our power unit performs and what driveability will be. We have been making some fine-tuning to give the drivers confidence in the rain, so we will see how this is going to go tomorrow.”