Fernando Alonso explains why Aston Martin chose to pit for slick tires instead of intermediates at his first stop

Fernando Alonso has explained why Aston Martin chose to pit for medium tires instead of intermediates when rain first arrived during the Monaco GP. He said that the team did not expect the rain to continue for too long.

The Spaniard started the race on hard tires and was around 10 seconds behind the leader when rain arrived. With the rain's intensity increasing and drivers struggling to keep the car on track, Alonso was surprisingly brought to the pits for medium tires.

The call proved to be the wrong one and the Aston Martin driver was swiftly brought back into the pits for intermediate tires on the very next lap.

Looking back at that particular moment in the race, Fernando Alonso explained why the team pitted for slicks. The rain was thought to be a passing shower that would ease off quickly but unfortunately, that didn't happen.

Looking back at the race, the Spaniard said on Sky Sports:

"It wasn't an easy race, especially when the rain came. It was very difficult to get temperature into the intermediates. Turn Five and Seven were very risky. We tried to be aggressive on the strategy by choosing the opposite tyre to Max at the start but he was just too fast for us today and deserved the victory."

He added:

"When I stopped, it was just raining in Turns Five and Seven. The rest of the track was completely dry. If you are in P2 and put intermediates on for only two corners, maybe Jenson could guess that good! The forecast we had was just a small shower and a few drops of rain. We didn't expect that amount of rain."

Aston Martin team principal on the decision to pit Fernando Alonso for slick tires

Aston Martin's team principal Otmar Marin Szafnauer also weighed in on the subject and gave a somewhat similar explanation as Fernando Alonso. He said:

“Starting from the front row and finishing second with Fernando in the Monaco Grand Prix is a tremendous result for the whole team – and a significant marker for how far we’ve travelled together. This was a difficult race to manage: we fitted Fernando with the Hard compound, hoping to use the strategy to jump Max later in the race.

"Then the rain came! Initially, the downpour wasn’t too heavy, and we fitted Mediums because an old, worn Hard tyre is incredibly difficult to manage on a wet track."

He added:

"The rain immediately increased, and switching to Intermediates was the logical choice just a lap later. That made no difference to the result – we wouldn’t have caught Max anyway. Fernando drove magnificently in treacherous conditions to equal AMF1 Team’s best-ever result – bravo."

Fernando Alonso's teammate Lance Stroll had a horror run as he could not score any points and had to retire from the race after the incident.