Tiny stones, big trouble: Gravel blast blamed for Alonso’s Monza DNF
Fernando Alonso’s Italian Grand Prix unraveled the way Monza heartbreaks often do — suddenly, brutally, and with a sense of injustice. Running a clean, points-paying race in seventh, the Aston Martin driver was pitched out on lap 25 when the front suspension failed over the Ascari exit kerb. He swore on the radio, limped back, and parked it. Another good Sunday gone.
Aston Martin says the failure didn’t start at Ascari. It started at the start.
As the pack funneled into Turn 1, Lando Norris got squeezed to the right and kicked up a spray of grass and gravel. Alonso was several cars back but right in the line of fire. According to the team, that shower of stones peppered the A525 in multiple areas — including the suspension — causing damage that wasn’t visible and didn’t immediately register on the systems. With the car loaded up lap after lap, the weakened part finally gave way.
“The team can confirm some gravel hit Fernando’s car on lap one in multiple areas, including his suspension, which compromised it,” Aston Martin said after the race. “Low-level, continuous loading caused the eventual failure of the part.”
Alonso, who’d qualified eighth and looked set for a tidy haul against quicker cars ahead, wasn’t in the mood for silver linings. “The suspension seems to have broken and we had to retire,” he said. “It’s a kerb we’ve been using all weekend and cars are still using in the race, so we’ll have to analyse what happened.”
The Spaniard’s frustration runs deeper than one failure. He’s spoken a few times this year about good chances that never make it to the flag. “Always these things happen when we have a scoring race,” he said in the paddock. “We had some races that we were dead last and nothing happened. Monaco I think I was P6 and retired with an engine problem. Today was P7, retired with a suspension problem. There are dozens of points that the luck probably was not with us. It’s frustrating — I should have maybe 20-plus points more than what I have.”
Strip away the emotion and the logic tracks. Monza rewards commitment over the kerbs, and modern F1 suspensions run stiff to keep the platform under control on the brakes. Add a lap-one gravel blast — the kind of invisible, nasty damage that doesn’t show until it does — and you’ve got a race that looks fine… right up until it isn’t.
The timing also hurts Aston Martin in a Constructors’ fight that’s tight in the midfield. The team sits sixth on 62 points, just one clear of Racing Bulls. Alonso is 12th in the Drivers’ standings, two points behind teammate Lance Stroll — margins that amplify every missed finish.
There isn’t much headline-grabbing drama to be found here, no setup gamble gone wrong or late call from the wall. Just Monza doing what Monza sometimes does: turning tiny debris into a very big problem. Expect the car to go under the microscope back at Silverstone, with fresh attention on how gravel damage propagates under heavy kerb loads and what can be strengthened without compromising performance.
For Alonso, the takeaway is simpler. The pace on Sunday was good enough. The execution was tidy. The points were there. They just didn’t make it to the chequered flag. And for a driver who still wrings more than most out of a narrow window, that’s the kind of result that lingers.
Next stop, another chance — and perhaps a cleaner first lap.
