Fernando Alonso believes Aston Martin returned to their “pre-Imola” form after a double points finish at Silverstone.
Alonso wasn’t able to state why exactly the AMR24 worked so well at this particular track, saying, “I drive the car. Very good question for Mike [Krack, team principal] and Tom [McCullough, performance director].”
However, he added that from a driver’s perspective, “Yeah, it was very good. I mean, the feeling was back to normality. We were the fifth or sixth fastest team.”
Aston Martin introduced an upgrade in Imola, one that ultimately failed to deliver the expected performance, leaving the drivers struggling and battling in the midfield in the last couple of rounds. At Silverstone, they recorded their first double points finish since Canada, with Alonso stating that he’s pleased with the progress made by the team.
“Nico [Hulkenberg], I think, was very fast the whole weekend,” he said. “But we could fight for points. 7th and 8th, I think it’s more or less the positions we were before—pre-Imola, in a way. So yeah, we came back to our more natural position, so happy for that.
“It has been better. I mean, after Austria, we regrouped a little bit. We understood a couple of directions that maybe were not right. And yeah, as I said, happy to be back in the points. It felt more competitive.”
Alonso was among the drivers who got caught out by the changing weather conditions during the British Grand Prix, losing two positions due to an ill-timed pit stop.
“Tricky race to understand,” Alonso commented. “And a gamble in some of the tyre changes. I waited too long to put the inters. But yeah, the track was too dry, probably, so you damaged a lot the inters on that first couple of laps. So I didn’t want to do that in case of heavy rain, to have a better inter tyre.
“It didn’t rain. So yeah, my bet, in a way, was not working. You need a little bit of luck on those.”
He added: “Well, we had a very unique situation, with both cars separated one second away. So one car has to stop in one lap, and the other car in the next lap. So yeah, it can go either way.
“It depends on how much it rains after that pit stop. And yeah, we lost a place today. But it’s the same result for the team. So happy for that.”
Aston Martin is planning on bringing another upgrade package to the upcoming Hungarian Grand Prix, one of the two remaining rounds before the summer break in August.
Asked whether he expects an improvement, Alonso said, “We need to prove it. We need to not talk and deliver the results.
“We’ve been bringing a lot of new parts to the car—some of them they work, some of them they didn’t. So hopefully in Hungary we have a positive surprise. We saw last year McLaren showing us how much you can change in a season the car performance, and this year we have Mercedes. So there are two examples that it is possible. It’s up to us.”
