Aston Martin’s performance dropped significantly after a good start to the 2023 season. Nevertheless, to enhance their recent showing, the team introduced several modifications, yet it wasn’t enough to make Fernando Alonso smile. The Silverstone side stumbled out of the start in Austin with a double Q1 departure and a poor showing in the sole practice session of the week. However, the Aston Martin duo somehow escaped the horrors and finished P12 (Alonso) and P14 (Stroll) in Saturday’s sprint.
Despite adopting some of the significant upgrades, including the upgraded floor, bodywork, and beam wing, the Silverstone team’s visit to COTA has remained unsuccessful so far. Subsequently, Fernando Alonso, the team’s seven-time podium finisher this season, has been disappointed.
While having a quick conversation with the DAZN Formula 1, Fernando Alonso highlighted that the team’s race in Texas would be an uphill battle, considering their current rhythm and pace aren’t aligned with their goals, which will probably leave them empty-handed. Despite this, the Spaniard emphasized the significance of learning from the difficult weekend for the upcoming races in Mexico and Brazil.
Fernando Alonso’s evaluation of the team’s performance in the USGP weekend
Following a disappointing two-day stint on the American circuits, the Aston Martin driver was discovered assessing the team’s performance. In one of his interviews with Dazn, Alonso claimed that he and Stroll were struggling for points at all times due to a lack of performance in both sessions and in the Sprint. Alonso also highlighted that tomorrow, when both drivers will start five places further back for the main race, they are almost certain to finish empty-handed.
On paper, Fernando Alonso’s comments after a miserable US GP Friday for Aston Martin read like a case of ‘honeymoon over’.
But as stark as those were, his demeanour didn’t give off the same impression: https://t.co/8mXKMwhUblhttps://t.co/8mXKMwhUbl
— The Race (@wearetherace) October 21, 2023
The 42-year-old said during his conversation, ” We’ve been uncompetitive since FP1 and in both qualifying. Now, in the race, nothing has changed either. We were very slow and without rhythm. Zero points today and tomorrow, coming from further back, possibly zero points as well.” Despite the team’s awful weekend so far, Alonso doesn’t rule out the potential of learning something. For that, the Spaniard and his team will discuss what is best for them, even if it means changing the car’s setup.
Not only that, but the 42-year-old is willing to even start from the pit lane in order to carry out useful testing. Alonso continued, saying,” We will discuss whether it is better to learn something and play the set-up or start from the pit lane anything that is useful to us, because doing 56 laps tomorrow just for the sake of doing them seems long.”
This year, the Aston Martin came in as the season’s dark horse and had shown perseverance, in fact, in the early season, the team was the closest competitor to Red Bull. However, their performance has recently declined, though questioning the team’s collaborative effort is still not the best thing to do.
Fernando Alonso underlines his willingness to make the most of the racing situation with coordinated efforts
The Spanish driver was frank in expressing his opinions on providing as much information to the team as possible in order for them to better optimize the car for the weekends in Mexico and Brazil. To make the most of the weekend, Alonso claims that over Saturday night and Sunday morning, the team will sit around and discuss the best possibility to understand how the “car can give more.”
Fernando Alonso has already written off the US GP as a “test session” 😳 https://t.co/iYoDQr4r8h
— WTF1 (@wtf1official) October 21, 2023
The team has undoubtedly introduced significant modifications with only one practice session, which Alonso considers to be a bold decision. However, the Spanish ace believes that the risk of bringing upgrades in a sprint weekend will be worth it if those changes are understood and will hopefully lead the squad back in the right direction.
According to racingnews365, Alonso said, “We took a lot of risk bringing the new package here with one free practice. We have to take these bold decisions and hopefully, the price will pay out at the end of the year if we have more information about this package.” With five races remaining, it has to be seen whether making decisions at the most detrimental moment will benefit Aston Martin or not.
