Aston Martin are heading into the first race weekend of 2024 in a weaker position than the start of last year, Fernando Alonso believes.
The team surprised its rivals at the start of last season. Alonso finished on the podium in his first appearance for them and took five more over the next seven races.
He ended the first day of practice for the new season in third place behind the two Mercedes drivers. But Alonso says that flatters the car’s performance.
“It’s difficult to read,” he told the official F1 channel. “Definitely I’m a little bit surprised that we are a little bit high on the times.
“But things can change dramatically if the fuel loads are different to everyone else. So I remain calm.”
He believes the team is heading in the right direction with its new AMR24 and is hopeful of further gains to come over the season.
“I’m happy with the set-up changes we did today,” he said. “I think we still need to find more performance. I think 12 months ago we were in a stronger position, I would say, here in Bahrain. But let’s see.”
Although Alonso ended the day ahead of the Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren drivers, he isn’t prepared to take his position at face value.
“Obviously we don’t know what the others are doing, we just complete our program,” he said. “We know the tyres quite well from the test, so we sacrificed FP1 a little bit using the medium [compounds], we concentrated a little bit more on the performance with two softs.
“Now in FP2, we learned a little bit from the car, I think. Did a few set-up changes that we are quite happy with the result. So let’s see tomorrow when we put everything together in qualifying and same for everybody.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
2024 Bahrain Grand Prix
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RaceFans…