Fernando Alonso has claimed that Aston Martin will overcome its struggles in 2024 faster than rival Formula 1 teams would due to owner Lawrence Stroll’s ambition.
Alonso’s move to Aston Martin last coincided with it emerging as the shock closest contender to Red Bull, with the ex-Alpine driver logging six podiums in eight races.
However, the Silverstone-based squad would lose ground in the development race and Alonso would stand on the rostrum twice more as it slipped back to fifth place.
Aston Martin has remained there this season and despite introducing upgrades at several rounds, the marque has been unable to bridge the gap to the quartet ahead.
But while Alonso has cautioned that Aston Martin appears to be regressing towards the midfield, the Spaniard has pledged his faith in Stroll Sr to inspire a turnaround.
The Canadian billionaire has invested a considerable amount since completing a takeover in mid-2018, including an all-new state-of-the-art base opening last summer.
“Well, it still shows that this is a complex sport,” Alonso said regarding Aston’s recent troubles. “McLaren until Austria race seven last year, they were fighting for Q1.
“And they have a great team, great people, great facilities and a great brand as well, you know, behind and they were out of Q1.
“And then you find something that, you know, the car is alive, you know, and then you are changing everything.
“And it’s the same for us, you know, last year, until let’s say mid-season, we were, you know, the team to look at and to copy.
“And yeah, suddenly, you know, you can quickly take two or three steps backwards. So now we need to focus on ourselves, get back there.
“I think 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 and we will fix things quicker than other teams I think thanks to him.”
Alonso endured a nightmare weekend at Imola earlier this month as he crashed in FP3 and then ran wide on his second lap and qualified with the slowest time overall.
The two-time champion would commence the race from the pit lane with an altered set-up and completed a glorified test session with Aston Martin’s newest updates.
Although Alonso holds a willingness to sacrifice his races to help Aston Martin long-term, he has accepted there are times he’ll have to deliver the best result possible.
“I think we dropped in performance relative to the others,” Alonso assessed.
“I think we increased the performance that our car had, but the others seemed to make the step a little bit bigger than us, and we dropped a little bit in terms of positions.
“In my case I think I was not perfect on those two races. You know, I was not driving well enough in Miami.
“And in Imola, I think it was more the search of answers that drives me sometimes on a weekend that I know the goals will not be good enough to satisfy us or myself.
“You know, when you are not fighting for top five or top seven or whatever, sometimes you switch on into 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.
And I think this is what happened in Imola a little bit in FP3 and then in Quali and the race, which obviously on one side is good because maybe you accelerate a little bit the fix of the problems. On the other side, that weekend is maybe zero points or you are a little bit less competitive than normal.
“So you need to combine normal weekends where you maximize the package and the points that are available, even if it’s P9.
“And some other weekends, you need to think if it’s, okay, we give up P9 today because we need to, you know, shortcut a little bit the time that we have for fixing the car.”
