Fernando Alonso believes the Aston Martin Formula 1 team is “moving in the right direction” again this season after he qualified fifth for tomorrow’s Japanese Grand Prix.
The Spaniard classified within five-tenths of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen on pole and ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and both Mercedes drivers.
Having received Aston Martin’s latest upgrades to his car overnight, Alonso exploited the AMR24’s potential to secure a top-five starting berth for the second time in 2024.
The Silverstone-based squad’s developments come at a time when Alonso is pondering his future and the two-time champion has been impressed with the team’s progress.
“It’s obviously difficult to know for sure, I think the team is analysing everything now,” he said.
“Yesterday I had the old package, today the new package, so I guess tonight we will have the data to confirm that and to quantify the improvement, but everything felt good in the qualifying.
“A little bit unexpected to be that competitive to be honest. Just a couple of hundredths from Ferrari, Leclerc behind us, Piastri behind us, and Mercedes.
“When we were here six months ago, 1.5 seconds from pole position and now we are four-tenths, so definitely we are moving in the right direction.”
Despite qualifying in the top five, Alonso was keen to point out that the pecking order is often closer in qualifying and race conditions show the “true” pace of the grid.
Q3 was spread by 1.2s and a similar margin accounted for the entire field in Q1 which allowed for drivers to place higher up the order than what was perhaps expected.
“I think in qualifying it’s true that everything is so close,” Alonso added.
“We saw Nico [Hulkenberg] and Valtteri [Bottas] today, they were three-tenths away or something, which is incredible.
“Then in the race you see the real pace of the cars.
“This is something we are struggling with a little bit as well – we are very competitive on Saturday and not so much on Sunday – so our true pace I think is the Sunday’s pace. On Saturday, I think because of the grip of the tyres, because of everything maybe you mask some of the problems.”
Meanwhile, Alonso is not anticipating that the compounds each team has available will be the decisive factor in the outcome of tomorrow’s race.
“I think the true pace of the cars will be the key factor,” he assessed. “For example tomorrow Red Bull I think will have a bigger advantage and a cleaner race than qualifying.”
In Aston Martin’s case, Alonso fell short of making a bold race prediction, electing to be more conservative, given the team’s difficulties in translating one-lap pace in 2024.
“I tend to be conservative on my guesses and predictions, and looking back at the first three races we are very strong on Saturday and not so strong on Sunday,” he said.
“We are maybe out of position being top five, so if I get overtaken by Oscar and the two Mercedes or something like that I would guess this is normal and we will fall back into our position.
“Let’s see what we can do, I’m very open to whatever the race brings to us. I’m extremely proud and happy of today’s job, and tomorrow is another day.”
