McLaren wasn’t the only team in the field dealing with a team order controversy in Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix, with Aston Martin facing their own internal battle in the closing stages of the race.
While Lando Norris yielded to common sense and relinquished his winning position to teammate Oscar Piastri, over at Aston, Lance Stroll repeatedly ignored a similar instruction to hand back a hard-fought tenth place to Fernando Alonso.
With just six laps remaining, Aston Martin saw an opportunity to potentially grab an extra point. Stroll, on fresher tyres thanks to a later pit stop, was instructed to overtake Alonso for tenth and attempt to challenge Yuki Tsunoda ahead.
The plan, however, came with a caveat. If Stroll couldn’t get past Tsunoda, he would cede the position back to Alonso.
When given the all-clear to overtake his teammate and hunt down Tsunoda, Stroll was anything but enthusiastic about the plan, telling race engineer Andrew Vizard: “I would have passed Fernando, but okay”.
As the laps dwindled and Tsunoda remained out of reach, urgency mounted in the Aston camp.
“Now, you need to switch back before the line, Fernando is four seconds behind you, there’s no pressure behind,” came the first, unanswered request. Followed by, “Lance, I suggest you drop back, let Fernando pass. He’s four seconds back.” Still, radio silence ensued.
With the checkered flag looming, Vizard’s final message acknowledged the missed opportunity: “Okay, that’s the flag. That is the flag.”
©AstonMartin
Stroll had secured the tenth-place finish and the final championship point for himself, leaving Alonso empty-handed.
Oddly, neither driver commented on the team order snub after the race, perhaps to keep any discord out of the public eye.
Alonso, however, expressed his frustration with the overall strategy.
“I think the strategy was not the right one today,” he said. “Obviously, now after the race, easy to say.”
Alonso pointed to the early pit stop on lap 7 and the long stint on medium and hard tyres as the root cause of his shortfall in the race.
“I think we stopped on Lap 7 and then from that point, 63 laps with one medium, one hard, was a little bit optimistic,” he explained.
“So, not a great pace and the strategy didn’t help.”
Aston Martin walked away from Hungary with a point thanks to Stroll’s defiance, but questions remain about their strategy and team dynamics.
The Silverstone-based outfit will need to address these issues quickly as they fight to defend their fifth place in the Constructors’ Championship.
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