He held off a far superior car, drove brilliantly and added the best moment of the race. No "just" there at all. Even in his forties, he's shown this last few seasons that he still has it. Mega drive imo.
again you could see yourself exactly where he was harvesting every lap and where he was deploying it. he was deploying off turn 2 to avoid any issues on the second straight and he was deploying on 10 and 12. perez never once looked like he was figuring it out and he was actually running a **** line through 10 that was just not helping him get any drive out of the corner. alonso drove tidily and consistently through out. kept his tyres going amd just kept doing the same thing. perez didn't change his outlook or amything based on what he was seeing for me im not going to go out of my way to heap praise on alonso nor seriously knock him either at a track where drs is massive and the toe is massive and having the clearly better car that was poor from perez. at least drop off and cool.car and recharge then go again with enough time to have a proper dive at it.
You can analyze it until you're blue in the face, but the bottom line is that he fended of an attack from a far superior car and provided probably the only bright moment of the race. Playing down does a disservice to that accomplishment.
it'd not really a big accomplishment. it's another perez failure. it's a good consistent drive but hardly genius
Get Alonso or Ricciardo in that second Red Bull, Horner FFS. I like Perez but he’s not the answer is he. Great to see Aston find a bit of the early season speed this weekend - big winter ahead for them to try and re-trace their development steps to ensure they move forward without issues. Other than that, god Red Bull and Max are boring How bad were Mercedes this weekend btw? So poor.
I think you are unfairly downplaying how impressive that constancy was. 7 tenths was the magic number, anything below that out of the last corner and Perez will pass under DRS. Fernando managed to hold it at 0.7-0.8 for about 20 laps when even the slightest error would have seen Perez fly past. Plus he had the presence of mind to judge when it was necessary to go defensive and when it wasn't. That's ultimately what tripped Checo up on the last lap, he defended the first corner needlessly.
I don't think so as consistency is what drivers are meant to be able to do. if he knew that another driver was coming and would stick it down the inside he might have had to move off line and end up tight going into turn 1 and 2. as he has perez who wasn't ever going to take a risk he just kept using the battery and driving the same lines. perez never changed what he was doing and didn't learn of all sos lines not deployments. he should have changed lines in 10 to 12 and deploy the full battery and the throw it up the inside and force alonso to compromise himself. did you see any aggression out of perez?
Alonso is a savvy driver, and one of the absolute best at positional defensive moves, and clearly knew when and how to use the tools at his disposal to fend off a far superior piece of machinery. Yes, Perez isn't on the same level as Alonso, but the fact that he was able to hold off Perez for a podium position photo finish deserves some acknowledgement. Perez on his day is a solid contender. He wasn't fighting off a Haas at the end there.
Alonso has a habit of holding off faster cars, done it since his Renault days. 99% drivers in the history of F1 couldn't do what he did today, Schumacher and Senna probably the only others.
Thanks to DRS and some of the rule changes, the art of defensive driving has become somewhat lost. Alonso still has that ability. One that springs to mind is Hungary 21 where he frustrated Hamilton lap after lap with a defensive master class. It was pure brilliance.
Would be nice if they kept tweaking the current regs and somehow get the cars smaller again. I really don't like DRS, there has to be an alternative.
Well it's easy to strip off aero and make cars narrower. the issue is all the tracks were designed by a person who hasn't a clue about racing. a lot of them should be much wider just to make alternative lines through corners possible. First corner at austin
Late to the party, but I’ll add my voice to those that said that Alonso’s drive was impressive - if you can’t enjoy those last few laps, it’s probably time to accept the sport isn’t for you.
