Alonso bullish Aston Martin “will fix things quicker than other F1 teams”

Aston Martin came out of the blocks flying in 2023 with six podiums for the Spaniard across the first eight races.

But as rivals Mercedes, Ferrari and in particular McLaren all made bigger gains over the past 12 months, Aston has found it hard to keep up in the development race, sliding to fifth in the pecking order.

While its progress on track is stalling, the Stroll-owned team is still in a build-up phase in its new Silverstone headquarters, with a new wind tunnel still on the way.

That investment to match Stroll’s lofty ambitions, having made a verbal approach to Red Bull’s Adrian Newey too, is underpinning Alonso’s faith that the team will be able to match and the surpass the development rate of its competitors in the near future.

When asked by Autosport if he’s confident Aston is starting to have all the right tools in place to not be outpaced in F1’s development race, the two-time F1 world champion replied: “It’s a complex sport.

“McLaren, until Austria, race seven last year, they were fighting for Q1. They have a great team, great people, great facilities, and a great brand behind. They went out of Q1.

“You find something that the car is alive, and then you are changing everything. It’s the same for us.

“Last year until mid-season we were the team to look at and to copy. Suddenly you can quickly take two or three steps backwards.

“So, now we need to focus on ourselves, get back there.

“Different to other teams, we have a great leader with Lawrence. We have not only the owner of the team, but also a very extremely competitive person behind.

“We will fix things quicker than other teams, I think, thanks to him.”

Aston upgraded its car in Imola, but while the sentiment is that its new parts are working as intended, they have not necessarily made the car easier to drive.

Both Alonso and Lance Stroll struggled with the AMR24’s handling, accentuated by an out-of-character crash for the Spaniard in FP3.

A pitlane start relegated Imola to a test session for Alonso, but he felt that was useful to try and get on top of the car’s weaknesses.

“When you are not fighting for top five or top seven or whatever, sometimes you switch to a set-up thing or test weekend, because to finish P9… I prefer to fix the problems of the car, give up that weekend and start from scratch on the next one,” he explained.

“It’s what happened in Imola a little bit, in FP3 and then in quali and the race, which obviously on one side…