Fernando Alonso has claimed that Aston Martin must now stop “talking” and start delivering amid the side’s struggles continuing in the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix.
Alonso endured a disastrous home outing last weekend as he qualified 11th and then lacked the race speed to compensate as he trailed home in a distant 12th place.
Aston Martin’s pointless showing supported Alonso’s claim in Monaco last month when he warned that the team had appeared to regress towards the midfield group.
The Spaniard was never in contention to add to his points total in Barcelona as excessive problems with degradation saw him become a sitting duck through the race.
“I am a little bit disappointed because we didn’t score any point,” Alonso recalled.
“We deserved not to score any point because we didn’t have the pace the whole weekend.
“In the race, it was extremely difficult. When you slide so much in the corners, also you kill the tyres. So you have two problems.
“You don’t have the pace, plus you have a lot of degradation. So all in all, it has been a very long race for us. We need to get better for us.”
Alonso has come home inside the points once in the past five races and he suspects that Aston Martin’s AMR24 will also face an uphill battle in the next two rounds.
But while he was in an upbeat mood post-qualifying, Alonso has now asserted that the Silverstone-based team must endeavour to knuckle down and work in silence.
“It is frustrating, but there’s nothing you can do now,” he accepted.
“So you start thinking in Austria immediately when you see the chequered flag and what you can do differently,”
“But I think it’s gonna be painful as well because it has some characteristics of Barcelona, with the long corners.
“It’s going to be another tough weekend, also in Silverstone, arguably.
“We cannot get too frustrated. It’s time to work harder, to talk less, to deliver more. It’s what we want to do.”
The developments Aston Martin introduced in Imola haven’t produced the expected step and also made the car “more difficult to drive” compared to the launch-spec.
Alonso has urged the British outfit to stop heightening anticipation and making declarations when it comes to the impending updates it will bring in the coming races.
“I’m looking forward, but we’ve been upgrading the car a lot and we didn’t deliver the results.
“So now it’s also a matter of whatever we bring to the track, it does deliver what we expect and we start getting better and better.
“So as I said, we need to work hard, get better every race, but without too much talking or promising.”
When asked to explain the reason behind the upgrades not correlating with the simulations the team had gathered, Alonso replied: “I’m a driver, not a technician”.