F1 Q&A: Mercedes; Orders from the Hamilton, Leclerc and Ferrari teams; The injury of Aston Martin and Isack Hadjar

How were the supposed improvements to the Aston Martin? Is there any sign of performance improvement? – Chris

Honda debuted its long-awaited ‘spec two’ engine at the Dutch Grand Prix, while Aston Martin added a new front wing and diffuser to the virtually all-new car unveiled at the previous race in Hungary.

Within the team, they expected the Honda engine to reduce lap times by 0.3 to 0.5 seconds.

The weekend painted a confusing picture.

On the one hand, Fernando Alonso seemed more competitive than ever in several points.

But he qualified further from pole, both in positional and percentage terms, than in Hungary.

There were extenuating circumstances, however, as he went 12th quickest before failing to improve on a tricky final lap hampered by a sub-optimal ‘preparation’ lap that left his tires outside the ‘window’. Without that, I probably would have progressed beyond the first session.

However, that suggests that the new Honda was little better than the old one. On the other hand, the driveability of the new engine was definitely worse, which may have skewed the picture.

But then Alonso put in an outstanding race with a one-stop strategy to finish ninth, taking care of the tires and timing his pace with all the experience and skill he has shown throughout his career to hold off two faster cars: Pierre Gasly’s Alpine and Yuki Tsunoda’s Racing Bull in the final stint.

Those are the first points Aston Martin has scored on merit all season.

As Alonso said: “We scored one point in Monaco with nine retirements (retirements). Today we scored two points with Max (Verstappen) abandoned. It was well deserved.”

Alonso said after the race that the team was planning to make two stops, but changed during the race because they were stuck behind other cars.

“We’re in traffic,” he said. “We can’t use our potential. We are faster in the corners than those in front of us and we are slower on the straights. We are stuck behind.

“So as soon as we have free runway in front of us, we try to use it. Even if it’s not the optimal performance or the optimal strategy, and that’s what we did today.”

Of the car and engine improvements, Alonso said: “Another step forward, especially on the chassis side.

“We brought four or five components here. Also, the Budapest package was understood during the (summer) holidays. With all the data available after the race, we fine-tuned the set-up a little bit around that new specification. In addition to the new parts. I think we are now optimizing the chassis side and we can extract the maximum.”

“The engine is more difficult. I don’t think we can be black and white whether we have more power or not.”

“As far as the driver is concerned, you change circuit a month after the other race. The drivability has been a difficult weekend. We had problems with downshifting again. We had problems with engine braking from corner to corner. It was a challenging weekend in that sense.”

These engines are very complex and teams need time to configure them for optimal performance. Therefore, it may take a few more races before the new Honda can be fairly judged.

Did Charles Leclerc cost Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton a podium position by stopping Hamilton when he refused to pit when told to do so, and what will Ferrari do to ensure he follows the team’s orders in the future? -Mike

Mid-race at Zandvoort, Lewis Hamilton dropped behind Charles Leclerc on newer tyres, their strategies offset each other and he asked to be let through to optimize his race.

From the way the television broadcast went, it sounded as if Ferrari had decided to put Leclerc in the pits to change tires to get him off the road. At first he resisted and did not come, but then he came on the next call.

Team boss Frederic Vasseur addressed this after the race, with somewhat confusing comments.

First, he said, at the time Ferrari was thinking about taking Hamilton all the way, so they didn’t want him to push too hard, but they hadn’t told him that was the case, because they wanted to keep the plan a secret from their rivals.

As for Leclerc, Vasseur said they were “waiting for him to pit” but then realized he was in danger of spinning out in traffic.

Vasseur said: “Charles was supposed to pit, we extended a lap and there was some kind of confusion, but this doesn’t worry me. Everyone will go back to the briefing, they will have a clear idea of ​​the race.”

Some will inevitably say that this was another example of Ferrari botching their strategy, an accusation leveled at them quite often.

Vasseur said: “It’s not that easy, but, if I look at the race now, my problem is that we didn’t tell Lewis that we expected him to go to the end, and it wasn’t a question of (him) pushing (at that time).”

Did the delay cost Hamilton third place? Hamilton thought so, but it’s impossible to know if he would have passed George Russell if he’d had an extra lap or two to try.