Fernando Alonso is one of the most experienced drivers in all of Formula 1. The Asturian driver is 42 years old and continues to give results as if he was the age of many young drivers.
With two world championships under his belt, Alonso is considered one of the best drivers the category has had in its entire history. Through teams such as Ferrari, McLaren, Renault (with whom he won both of his titles), Alpine and currently Aston Martin, Alonso has achieved a total of 106 podiums, 24 fastest laps and 32 victories in 380 Grand Prix entries.
Following the arrival of the Asturian driver to Aston Martin during the 2023 Formula 1 season, Alonso helped the British-Canadian team consolidate itself as the fifth best team on the grid, while he finished in fourth position in the drivers’ championship.
Something extremely good for this team after a few difficult seasons. Alonso achieved a total of 8 podiums during his first season with Aston Martin, a turnaround in his professional career without a doubt.
“It was an incredible season. And, probably 12 months ago, 10 months ago even, when we launched the car, we were not expecting to be in this position. It has been an incredible journey.” Alonso stated during an interview with his own team. “From a driver’s point of view, it’s been a pleasure to see the determination and the focus in the performance that we witnessed this year from Aston Martin.”
When asked about the competitiveness his Aston Martin had from day one, Alonso confessed that he was also surprised. “There were moments during the pre-season test when I thought it was too good to be true. And then we had the first race, we were as competitive as the test suggested, and we finished on the podium.”
Photo Credit: Aston Martin F1
Even though he had an excellent season individually, Alonso achieved a total of 206 points of the 280 total points that Aston Martin had. This means that his teammate and son of the team owner, Lance Stroll, got the remaining 74 points. We are talking about Alonso scoring 73.5% of the points, while his teammate only got 26.5%.
Although for much of the season they were fighting to stay in P3 or P4 of the constructors’ championship, Aston Martin finished in P5, being overtaken by McLaren.
The rival British outlet had a terrible start to the season, but little by little were able to bring their challenger back to life. This is what the Asturian driver expects from his own team for the upcoming season.
“I don’t think it’s going to change much because there are too many unknowns every season – anything can happen in Formula One. When we hit the track in winter testing or race one next year, I think we will see how things are and be very open with whatever targets we set for the championship.”
” We will hopefully be competitive again, fighting for regular points and podiums, hopefully for our first win – that would be the dream – but we cannot underestimate the challenge.”
“We exceeded expectations this year because expectations were low. That’s why this season feels amazing. If we set expectations too high – unrealistically high – there’s a danger of the opposite happening.”
“This being my second year with the team will help. I don’t need to do many of the things I had to do at the start of this year: I don’t need to put names to all the faces; I don’t need to do seat fittings, learn the terminology and do all of the other accommodations that have to happen when you’re a new driver in a team.”
Because 2023 was Alonso’s first year with his new team, the Asturian had to first find his place within the team. This means that the process of meeting new people, new engineers, new mechanics, even new sponsors, took time. Now that he is acclimatized to this environment, the priority is the performance of the car.
“Everything will just be easier. We can focus more on performance and preparation for the first couple of races right from day one.”
“We also have a very strong baseline to work with from 2023. When we arrive at a race, the work we do will be an optimization of what we did this year. The 2022 car was perhaps not good enough as a reference for us this year, and on many weekends, we were starting from zero. 2024, it should be easier in terms of preparation, and we can focus more on detail.”
