Aston Martin puts both cars into Q2 at Sepang

Aston Martin put both cars into the second qualifying session at Sepang for the first time this season, with Fernando Alonso set to start 12th and Lance Stroll 14th for the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. The result marked a relative improvement for a team that has struggled to progress beyond the first round of qualifying this year, though penalties to other drivers helped determine the final grid positions. Alonso said the car’s performance depended on circuit characteristics rather than a recent change to its specification. He described the car as unchanged over the previous four rounds and said Aston Martin was more competitive when a circuit’s layout and amount of straight-line running suited it. At Sepang, he said, the team was about 1.5 seconds off the fastest Q2 time, a smaller gap than it had seen earlier in the season. The qualifying result does not establish that Aston Martin has resolved its underlying performance limitations. Alonso said the team remained less competitive and could lose places on the straights, where he said it lacked speed to overtake.