Aston Martin’s 2024 season is starting in a rather complicated fashion. It was ninth place for Fernando Alonso and tenth for Lance Stroll. The 42-year-old was almost two times further behind Verstappen than at this stage in 2023.
“We started more or less where we finished last year. That is, as a fifth force in the championship.
“Yesterday, we had a good qualifying, but it was an exception. It wasn’t realistic for us to be so high,” said Alonso, who spoke of a return to reality for the Silverstone team.
Tom McCullough: “The AMR24 is a much better machine in many areas”
Tom McCullough, performance director of the Aston Martin Formula 1 team, spoke before the race.
“The AMR24 is a significantly better car in all those areas we focused on over the winter, such as high-speed performance and efficiency,” said the English engineer.
However, especially regarding the second technical characteristic. The Bahrain circuit requires an important compromise and is therefore not assessed by the teams as indicative.
“From that point of view, we will have a better idea when we race on a few more tracks,” McCullough said.
The AMR24 has more downforce, more grip and takes better care of the tyres but it is always a relative game. Formula 1 is always about where you are relative to rivals.
However, Alonso is not discouraged and remains confident for the rest of the season:
“In 2023, we were limited by some parts of the car and couldn’t modify them. This year the concept has changed and we have opened a new window of development.
“We have discovered different directions in the wind tunnel to improve,” Alonso explained.
However, he is also aware that rivals are progressing. The Spaniard hails Formula 1 as “the most complicated sport in the world.”
It’s no coincidence that Aston Martin started where it left off last year.
The Silverstone-based team used the Bahrain weekend as a continuation testing. They experimented with various set-ups during free practice to improve their performance after free practice.
At least in low-fuel, the results were encouraging.
“During testing, we struggled with the balance of the car in very windy conditions and on low fuel.
“Our free practice plan was therefore to focus on understanding how to improve these aspects.”
“Then we put it all together on Friday evening, with analysis and working on the simulator all night to find what we believed was the best compromise.”
The result was a super qualifying, as the third team on the grid. However, Aston Martin wanted to emphasise that their focus was still the Grand Prix.
Despite this, the AMR24 failed to maintain its competitiveness over a race distance.
Aston’s simulation tools correctly predicted Alonso would finish 9th
Even though the English team focused on race pace, the free practice data suggested that Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren were still ahead.
“It was a difficult race but not surprising, since this morning’s simulations placed us as fifth-place.
“So we would have fought for ninth and tenth place, we did,” Fernando Alonso admitted.
The gap to the top four teams was very significant, as was the gap to the slower competitors as if Aston were truly in no man’s land.
Also for this reason, the English team tried a desperate move with Alonso to gain some positions.
In fact, they thought about waiting a long time at the wall before stopping him for his second stop, waiting for a possible Safety Car. However, this never arrived, but there really was nothing to lose.
“I think I finished 18 seconds behind McLaren and 28 seconds behind Zhou’s Sauber, so I was in a minute of the race where there was no one there.
“We tried a slightly different strategy, stopping much later than everyone else. To try and look for a red flag, a safety car or something that could give us an advantage.
“But nothing happened, and we had to settle for this ninth place,” underlined the two-time Spanish world champion.
Alonso hopes for tracks more suited to the AMR24 and to that race for developments, called upon by many teams to try to catch up on those precedes them.
“Last year, we saw how things changed as the races went by. Mercedes has grown and above all McLaren has become the second force.
“Let’s see if we can be one of those important changes this year, one of those surprises during the season,” concluded the Spaniard.
Author: Piergiuseppe Donadoni
Translation: Jaden Diaz-Ndisang
