Fernando Alonso highlights 'fragile' Aston Martin 'risk'

Fernando Alonso has acknowledged that Aston Martin will be forced to retire his car during the Australian Grand Prix if there is any hint of an issue appearing.

Team principal Adrian Newey revealed on Friday that the team only had two Honda batteries left in its pool, with those the two currently fitted inside its cars.

It meant that the squad has been forced to navigate the Melbourne weekend with significant caution, as a further battery failure would rule the drivers out.

Only Alonso was able to partake in qualifying, while team-mate Lance Stroll failed to turn a single lap on Saturday.

Facing 58 consecutive laps on Sunday, Alonso stated Aston Martin must approach the race with care.

“We will be flexible every lap,” Alonso told the media, including RacingNews365. “We will monitor the situation. As Adrian said, we are short on parts, so there are no secrets on that.

“China is next week. Hopefully, we can do as many laps as possible, and hopefully we can do nearly the whole race.

“But at the first sign that there is something potentially wrong, we can't risk running, running, running until we [create] some big damage and compromise next week.”

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Alonso ended the session in 17th place after being eliminated from the opening qualifying segment of the session.

After entering the weekend lacking mileage to his rivals, Alonso hailed his issue-free runs during the second and third practice session which allowed the team to uncover hidden pace.

“I've been trouble-free in FP2 and FP3, so that allowed me to finally be on track and in sync with all the cars and try different things on the setup,” he said.

“Even if the power unit is the same as yesterday, we gained two seconds today just because we were on track and were optimising things on the chassis and things like that.

“There is huge potential in the car; we just need more laps. We just need more consistency. 

“It seems very fragile at the moment, as car 18 [Stroll] shows. It depends on the day.”