It was yet another disappointing outing for Aston Martin Racing at the Portuguese Grand Prix, as the team tried everything possible hoping for a breakthrough, and ultimately ending up far off the top 10. One of the team’s gambles was switching Sebastian Vettel’s position with his teammate, midway through the race.

Interestingly though, Lance Stroll chose to give up his position to Vettel during the latter part of the race after failing to find a way past Antonio Giovinazzi.

As the race inched its way to the chequered flag, Vettel’s race engineer took to the team radio to give a heads-up that Stroll will be letting him past to retake P13.

“Lance is letting you back past,” he said.

And Vettel’s response clearly hinted that the car wasn’t just quick enough to fight for a top 10 finish, despite starting the race from a healthy P10.

“Okay, well, we tried all race. Ultimately, we didn’t have enough pace to really put pressure on the car in front. The car’s been reasonable,” the German replied to his race engineer.

Troublesome weekend for Aston Martin

Vettel was on the back foot from the very start of the race, having to start on a set of used soft tires. Meanwhile, most of the cars around him were on sets of medium tires, giving them a chance at opting for a much longer stint.

And by the time others pitted and came out on a fresh and shiny set of tires, Vettel’s tires were almost reaching its end.

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Hence, as the race went by, his tire disadvantage started to haunt him, as rivals started blitzing past the 4-time world champion without a lot of hard work.

Ultimately, Aston Martin’s only ray of hope was Lance Stroll, who was then behind Vettel, in P14. The Canadian was running on much fresher tires looking pacy enough to fight the Alfa Romeo ahead. Hence, Aston Martin called for the swap between their drivers, which never paid off.

What’s problematic for Aston Martin is that the updates never seemed to work on Stroll’s car. P17 in qualifying and P14 in the race aren’t the numbers Aston Martin were looking forward to with their recently updated car parts.

Hence, will the British outfit find a way out of this string of poor performances? How is the upcoming Spanish Grand Prix going to treat this team? Only time will.