Aston Martin kicked off their 2023 Formula 1 campaign in a confident manner, with Fernando Alonso making six trips to the podium in the first eight rounds. After round fourteen, they were sitting in a respectable fourth place in the championship table with seven impressive podiums under their belt.
In stark contrast, Aston Martin has only managed to secure 73 points so far, displaying a glaring deficit of 142 points in comparison to last year. With the development taking a wrong turn and the car being significantly more challenging to drive, the team is heavily relying on upcoming upgrades to regain lost ground and have a better second half of the season.
Aston Martin’s downward trajectory has particularly hit Alonso hard. With a best finish of fifth place at Jeddah early in the year, he made his stance on the recent upgrades and his goal for the rest of the season abundantly clear as he faced the press ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix.
When asked about his criticism of the Aston Martin pit wall at the Hungarian Grand Prix, the veteran Spaniard emphasised the necessity of making better strategic decisions on the spot and learning from their mistakes to capitalise on a race weekend better. At the same time, he also acknowledged that it is easier to make these observations in retrospect.
“Obviously we analysed everything on Monday – how the race went and what we could have done differently. It’s very easy always after the race to change things and to optimise everything.”
“I think if we have the same situation in the future or we have a possibility in the future to do a different strategy or to understand the race in a different way, we will do. But in Hungary, maybe we were not optimal, especially on my car. We probably lost ninth from Tsunoda but hopefully we will get better here.”
Alonso was fairly content with how the new upgrades performed in Hungary and stated that the correlation between the wind tunnel data and the car’s behaviour on track was satisfactory. After encountering a couple of setbacks in development, the Aston Martin driver insisted that a positive weekend was essential to steer them on the right track and set a course for future upgrades. However, he was cautiously optimistic and stated that they have a long road ahead.
“He responded well. I think we are quite happy with how the new package worked in Hungary. He is doing what the wind tunnel was saying and we had a very good correlation.”
“It was very important after a few of the upgrades that we were a bit more up and down. I think the team is quite happy with Budapest. Not forgetting that this is only the first step and we are still a long way from where we want to be. Now that it seems that we found a path and we see on track what we see on the wind tunnel, maybe it’s easier for us to add downforce now without any scare of not seeing on track.”
When asked about his opinion on the lack of successful upgrades and multiple teams reverting to older specifications, Alonso answered, “I don’t know.” Nonetheless, he elaborated that there is a huge difference between wind tunnel testing in a controlled setting and replicating those same results under varying conditions on different tracks with unique characteristics.
“Obviously we only hear what the technical people are saying. Maybe we are not the ones to answer that question. We only hear that in the pursuit of adding downforce the car is more fragile and more peaky on everything that you do.”
“But obviously, one thing is testing cars on the wind tunnel on ideal and consistent conditions. And on a racetrack, you know. Here in Spa, you go at 60 km an hour in turn 1; you go at 300 in turn 10, 11. The last corner it goes uphill, I think 8%. So, I mean, the car is never stable, it’s never square. You always have all your different ride heights. So I think cars on track, or let’s say the track is the real test for a Formula 1 car at the moment.”
The media was also eager to know how the team was planning their next steps for progress, given that the upgrades had worked as planned. The Aston Martin driver revealed that after gaining a better understanding of the AMR24, they have a confident plan to extract more performance in the near future.
“Maybe the team has now a better understanding of where to put performance or with the safety that it will add lap time, it will make the car faster. So this was a key upgrade for us I think and it worked as expected. So it gave us more confidence for sure, yes.”
