Fernando

Team-mate Lance Stroll could not run at all on Saturday at Albert Park because of engine problems and will start last.

Alonso said: “The mechanics, they’ve been working flat out and changing power-units day and night, you know, the last six weeks. So, even on the other side of the garage, with Lance being so unlucky in FP3 and ‘quali’ with zero laps, when you go on track and you are in the mix with a few cars, it’s a little bit better than being dead last, as we were yesterday.

“Maybe that’s enough to ignite a little bit of motivation in everyone in the garage. That’s probably part of our job now as drivers, you know, to keep the morale of the team high in difficult moments.”

The team are still facing a difficult situation and may not finish Sunday’s race.

They have only two batteries left for their hybrid system, and none available at the Honda factory, so will have to run a cautious race to ensure they are even able to take part in the second grand prix of the season, in China next weekend.

“We are short on parts, there is no secrets on that,” Alonso said.

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

“But the first sign that there is something potentially wrong, we cannot risk running, running, running until we make some big damage and then we compromise next week, so we will have to be very flexible.

“We are one team, we cannot separate the two things. There is no secret that the main problem is the PU. We are down power and reliability. We didn’t manage many laps in the winter and now we are short on stock for the batteries, we cannot do many laps or we are short on parts. We need to fix the power-units and Aston Martin is trying to help as much as possible with Honda.”

Two top City Section baseball teams, El Camino Real and San Fernando, faced off Friday in a pitcher’s duel that went eight innings.

Senior Ray Pelayo of San Fernando kept throwing strikes, keeping El Camino Real off balance for 7⅔ scoreless innings with eight strikeouts and one walk. But then came a balk that scored the winning run in El Camino Real’s 1-0 victory.

Hudson December threw six scoreless innings for El Camino Real and Andrew Katzman struck out three in two scoreless innings.

South Torrance 4, El Segundo 3: In a battle of unbeaten Pioneer League teams, South Torrance (6-0) received a walk-off single from Owen Rhodes in the bottom of the seventh. El Segundo tied it 3-3 in the top of the seventh on a two-out, three-run home run by Chase Mattoon. Issac Orozco struck out nine in five innings and also homered for the Spartans.

Crespi 3, Saugus 2: Justin Kim had two RBIs for the Celts.

Sylmar 7, Legacy 1: Rickee Luevano threw a two-hitter with nine strikeouts.

Sierra Canyon 12, West Ranch 1: Isaias Tirado hit a three-run home run and four pitchers combined to give up five hits.

Mater Dei 15, Rockwall-Heath (Texas) 1: Ezekiel Lara had three hits and five RBIs in Texas. Earlier, the Monarchs gave up seven runs in the third inning of an 8-1 loss to Rockwall-Heath.

St. John Bosco 1, Gahr 0: Star closer Jack Champlin got a strikeout to end the game, finishing two shutout innings of relief. Champlin drove in the game’s only run with an RBI double in the sixth inning. Julian Garcia struck out six with no walks in five innings for St. John Bosco.

San Juan Hills 11, Cypress 0: Garrett Gandolfo threw five scoreless innings with seven strikeouts and Clay Riggs contributed three RBIs for San Juan Hills.

Santa Margarita 1, Damien 0: Warren Gravely IV had the only RBI in the Eagles’ win. Tyler Unter struck out six in five shutout innings.

Garfield 9, Cleveland 7: Omar Martinez had three hits and Victor Alvarez drove in three runs for Garfield. Joshua Pearlstein finished with three hits for Cleveland.

Palos Verdes 8, West Torrance 0: Kai Van Scoyoc struck out nine in five innings and Asher Friedman had a home run and a double for Palos Verdes.

Valencia 12, Chatsworth 0: An eight-run second inning helped lead the Vikings to a five-inning win.

Bishop Amat 13, Gardena Serra 2: Joaquin Ortiz finished with three hits and four RBIs.

Corona Centennial 19, Eastvale Roosevelt 3: Devin Bishop and Emiliano Castaneda each hit home runs for Centennial. Ethan Miller had a double and triple.

Servite 6, Anaheim Canyon 1: Mickey Cabral went three for four and Cole Grothues struck out three in 2⅓ innings of scoreless relief.

Corona Santiago 5, Crean Lutheran 4: Jonathan Thorton delivered three hits and two RBIs for the Sharks.

Fullerton 1, Chaparral 0: Garrett Wrightman threw four innings of scoreless relief and Caleb Brown had an RBI double in the third inning for Fullerton.

Edison 11, Tesoro 7: Ben Wilson hit a grand slam and finished with five RBIs for Edison.

El Dorado 10, Granada Hills 4: Lorenzo Favela hit a three-run home run to lead El Dorado.

Ayala 7, San Dimas 1: Caleb Trugman struck out nine with zero walks in a complete game.

Loyola 14, Venice 1: Wyatt Clougherty had three hits and Luca Marucci contributed three RBIs for Loyola.

Softball

JSerra 2, Norco 0: In Arizona, the Lions knocked off No. 1-ranked Norco behind Liliana Escobar, who struck out 13 in six innings.

Norco 5, Torrance 0: Coral Williams struck out 10 in six innings. Leighton Gray and Rae Logue hit home runs.

Garden Grove Pacifica 4, Anaheim Canyon 2: Natalia Amezquita had a two-run single for Pacifica, which later defeated Orange Lutheran 6-2.

Orange Lutheran 7, Perry 1: Mia Scott had four RBIs for the Lancers.

Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 15, Culver City 0: Ellayne Tellez-Perez had three hits and five RBIs.

Newey’s Red Bull cars prevented Alonso winning at least two further championships, when he was at Ferrari in 2010 and 2012, and the two have long wanted to work together.

Aston Martin signed to become Honda’s works partner in May 2023, while the Japanese company was in the course of four consecutive drivers’ titles and two constructors’ championships with Red Bull.

Newey, a design legend regarded as the finest aerodynamic engineer in F1 history, said Honda’s problems were founded in its decision to quit F1 in 2021, only to change its mind on the basis of the new rules that are being introduced this year.

Newey, who joined Aston Martin in March last year, said he and the team did not know about Honda’s problems until November, when he, team owner Lawrence Stroll and chief strategy officer Andy Cowell visited Honda’s base in Tokyo “to discuss rumours” that the Japanese company “wouldn’t achieve” their “original target power”.

He added: “Out of that came the fact that many of the original workforce had not returned when they restarted.

“When they reformed, a lot of the original group had it now transpires disbanded and gone to work on solar panels or whatever.

“A lot of the group were new to F1 and didn’t have the experience they had previous.

“Plus, when they came back in 2023 that was the first year of the budget cap for engines.

“All their rivals had been developing away through 2021-2022, with continuity, existing team and free of budget cap.

“They re-entered with, let’s say, only, I’m guessing, 30% of their original base staff and now in a budget cap era so they started very much on the back foot and unfortunately they have not been able to catch up.”

Mexican writer-director Michel Franco (“Memory”) explores dynamics of money, class and the border through the spiky, unsettling erotic drama “Dreams,” starring Jessica Chastain and Isaac Hernández, a Mexican ballet dancer and actor.

In the languidly paced movie, Franco presents two individuals in love (or lust?) who experiment with wielding the power at their fingertips against each other. The film examines the push-pull of attraction and rejection on a scope that’s both intimate and global, finding the uneasy space where the two meet.

Chastain stars as Jennifer McCarthy, a wealthy San Francisco philanthropist and socialite who runs a foundation that supports a ballet school in Mexico City. But Franco does not center on her experience, but that of Fernando (Hernández), whom we meet first escaping from the back of a box truck filled with migrants crossing the U.S.–Mexico border. He’s abandoned in San Antonio on a 100-degree day.

His journey is one of extreme survival, but his destination is the lap of luxury: a modernist San Francisco mansion where he makes himself at home and where he’s clearly been before. A talented ballet dancer who has already once been deported, he’s risked everything to be with his lover, Jennifer, though, as a high-profile figure, she’d rather keep her affair with Fernando under wraps. He’s her dirty little secret but he’s also a human being who refuses to be kept in the shadows.

As Jennifer and Fernando attempt to navigate what it looks like for them to be together, it seems that larger forces will shatter their connection. In reality, the only real danger is each other.

The storytelling logic of “Dreams” is predicated on watching these characters move through space, the way we watch dancers do. Franco offers some fascinating parallels to juxtapose the wildly varying experiences of Fernando and Jennifer — he almost dies of thirst and heat stroke; she arrives in Mexico on a private plane, but both enter empty homes alone, melancholy. During a rift in their relationship, Fernando retreats to a motel, drinking red wine out of plastic cups with a friend in his humble room, ignoring Jennifer’s calls, while she eats alone in her darkened dining room, sipping out of crystal.

These comparisons aren’t exactly nuanced but they are stark and, for most of the film, Franco just asks us to watch them move together and apart, in a strange, avoidant pas de deux. Often dwarfed by architecture, their distinctive bodies in space are more important than the sparse dialogue that only serves to fill in crucial gaps in storytelling.

Cinematographer Yves Cape captures it all in crisp, saturated images. The lack of musical score (beyond diegetic music in the ballet scenes) contributes to the dry, flat affect and tone, as these characters enact increasing cruelties — both emotional and physical — upon each other as a means of trying to contain each other, until it escalates into something truly dark and disturbing.

Franco loses the plot of “Dreams” in the third act. What is a rather staid drama about the weight of social expectations on a relationship becomes a dramatically unexpected game of vengeance as Jennifer and Fernando grasp at any power they have over the other. She fetishizes him and he returns the favor, violently.

Ultimately, Franco jettisons his characters for the sake of unearned plot twists that leave the viewer feeling only icky. These events aren’t illuminating and feel instead like a bleak betrayal. The circumstances of the story might be timely, but “Dreams” doesn’t help us understand the situation better, leaving us in the dark about what we’re supposed to take away from this story of sex, violence, money and liberty. Anything it suggests we already know.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.