Fernando Alonso Discourages Aston Martin to Place New Upgrades at Red Bull’s Home to Slash the Gap Due to This Pertinent Reason

Aston Martin has had a dream start to the 2023 season, with their AMR23 being inferior to the Red Bulls by just a couple of tenths or so. A major upgrade to their car at this stage of the season could very well mean that they can catch up with Red Bull and fight for race wins. However, Fernando Alonso believes that the Red Bull Ring is not the right place to implement those upgrades.

F1 heads to Austria this weekend for the Austrian GP – the home race for Red Bull Racing. Beating the untouchable Red Bull at their home race on the Red Bull Ring would be a dream come true for any team. Ferrari did that last season and this season Aston Martin have the chances to do so.

Aston Martin is one of the very few teams that have any realistic chance of catching up with Red Bull at the moment. However, Alonso believes that bringing upgrades at the Austrian GP to catch them, will not be the right decision to attempt this feat because it is a Sprint Weekend.

Sprint Weekend might hamper Aston Martin upgrades

The Austrian GP is the second Sprint weekend of the F1 calendar, after the Azerbaijan GP. Having a Sprint Race during the Grand Prix weekend means that teams get significantly less time to set up and optimize their cars.

According to Alonso, this would be a disadvantage if any team is bringing major upgrades. The Spaniard said, “I think the sprint weekend will not be ideal for us. We still [need] more time maybe of free practice with our new upgraded car. We still need to understand and optimize the package a little bit.”

Alonso clearly wants to avoid the risk of going into a race weekend without having enough time to get accustomed to the changes in the car. The new rule changes regarding the Sprint Weekend that have been brought in this year are only adding to Alonso’s woes.

For the 2023 season, the Sprint races will have a separate Qualifying shootout on Saturday. This means that the Qualifying for the main race happens on Friday, which leaves the teams with only one Free practice session to set up their cars.

Mercedes is also aiming to catch up with Red Bull

While Aston Martin has been asked by Alonso to not bring any upgrades to Austria, Mercedes have confirmed that they will bring a major upgrade package in the next race at Silverstone.

Mercedes have had a recent upsurge in form and are looking to continue their stride towards the front of the grid. Toto Wolff has confirmed that there would be two upgrade packages coming in before the summer break. While one would be at the British GP, the other has not been confirmed yet.

Aston Martin will also probably wait till the British GP before bringing in their upgrades. However, they would not want to wait any further and get overtaken by Mercedes in terms of performance.