Hours before the United States Grand Prix, Aston Martin and Haas made the decision to remove both of their cars from the parc ferme to conduct setup adjustments.
However, the choice has a price. Thus, Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll of the Aston Martin team, as well as Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg, will all begin the race from the pit lane.
It comes after both teams brought significant upgrades to the Circuit of the Americas in the hope it would give their respective seasons a boost. But the Sprint format restricted them to both an hour of practice to learn as much as they could about their new cars.
And it meant they discovered in qualifying and during the Sprint on Saturday that their upgraded cars were not performing as expected. In the hope of improving their chances in the Grand Prix, both teams opted to make set-up changes.
But doing so would have required removing the vehicles from the parc ferme, which is prohibited. Therefore, the pit lane will be the starting location for all four drivers. The stewards verified the results in individual decision documents for each competitor.
They demonstrated that before making the setup adjustments, both teams requested the FIA technical delegate’s consent. The teams evidently believed that altering the car setup would increase their chances of winning the race since all four drivers were already scheduled to start in the 14th or lower position.
Haas team principal Guenther Steiner said after the Sprint that he was concerned over the lack of impact the upgrades had. The team had purposely not been adding bits to their cars for months so they could place all their development efforts on this switch of concept.
But Magnussen and Hulkenberg qualified poorly on Friday night and did not set the Sprint race alight either. “It didn’t go to plan today,” said Steiner. “We’ve got more work to do but, initially, we’re not very happy with what’s happened, so we have to see how we tackle tomorrow.
After one practice, two qualifying sessions, and one little race, it’s impossible to draw any firm conclusions. We discovered a few things and went in the wrong direction. But right now, we need to locate more because the update hasn’t produced the results we were hoping for.
Regarding his own team’s difficulties, Alonso, an Aston Martin racer, said: “It was a bit hazardous to bring maybe the upgrades to a Sprint format. You rely so much on FP1 being flawless with two vehicles running separate tests, but FP1 was utter chaos. Since then, I believe we are in worse shape.
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