Fernando Alonso opens up on the Aston Martin crew skipping lunch to work on the car during the F1 Austrian GP

Fernando Alonso revealed that the Aston Martin crew skipped their lunch to work on his AMR24 after the Sprint and changed the car's setup for the qualifying for the 2024 Austrian GP on Saturday. The Spanish driver had a dismal Sprint race as he was unable to make any progress and was fighting against the likes of RB and Haas to eventually finish P16, which turned into P15 after Nico Hulkenberg's 10-second penalty.

The two-time world champion had been out-qualified in the Sprint Qualifying on Friday by his teammate Lance Stroll, who finished P10 in the Sprint race. But he was able to return the favor in the main Qualifying later on Saturday as the Canadian failed to get out of Q1 while Alonso finished in P15.

Speaking with F1.com, Fernando Alonso was appreciative of the efforts of the team to completely change the setup of the car ahead of qualifying and skipping their meals. He said:

"It was difficult, tough qualifying tough weekend so far. We are not fast enough to fight for higher positions but the team is still trying everything they can. They didn't have even time to eat today to have lunch, because we changed the car completely from the spring race to qualifying."

"So we changed completely the whole setup just trying something different. We're still more or less in the same position so it's not a problem to set up as fundamentally we don't have the pace."

---

Fernando Alonso predicts a tough Austrian GP despite the changes

Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso stated that starting from P15 on Sunday will make it difficult for them to fight for the points

As quoted by the aforementioned source, the 42-year-old envisioned a difficult 71 laps for him, saying:

"I think it's going to be difficult to win the points at the moment is may not the position we deserve, so we just need help from the others in front that may happen."

"This is Austria, maybe a lot of things will happen tomorrow and we need to stay focused. We need to see the chequered flag and hopefully, the last few points will be on our table," Alonso added.

Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin have scored points only once in the last four races, when he finished P6 in the Canadian GP ahead of his teammate Stroll in Montreal earlier in the month.

Ever since introducing their upgrades in Japan, the Silverstone-based team have found it difficult to replicate their early season form, when they were fighting for points alongside Mercedes and McLaren.

The British team are currently in P5 with 58 points and are 101 points behind Mercedes in their battle for P4 in the Constructor's Championship.