Fernando Alonso asserts that there is no “magic bullet” or “recipe” that will catapult Aston Martin towards its ambition of challenging for Formula 1 World Championships.
After a seventh-place finish in the first year under the current ground effect regulations, Aston Martin will be aiming to build on an encouraging campaign that saw the team score 225 more points than in 2022.
However, Alonso had taken six podiums in the first eight races to place the Silverstone-based squad in contention for second place before a mid-season slump dropped it to fifth.
The Spaniard admits he was surprised by the team’s promising standing but underlines that making inroads into the sport’s elite won’t be straightforward for Aston Martin.
“The starting point is a little bit better than what I thought,” Alonso conceded. “But now the real difficulty starts.
“I think the first step – I will not say that it’s easy to be competitive – but I think with so many examples, like Alpine last year, is to be sometimes even in the top five or something, when we were in a happy place some weekends.
“We see AlphaTauri, how much they’ve improved during this season. So, let’s say that that first step, to become a top 10 contender, is the easiest part.
“Now comes the tricky period for Aston Martin. I think the next two or three years – to find that extra bit, to create something that no one has in that moment, to be creative, to be innovative, I think that’s maybe the biggest question mark that we need to face, and I think no one has the answer.”
Aston Martin attempted to arrest its plight with an upgrade package in Austin that culminated in the side experimenting with aero configurations across several rounds.
Although Alonso is confident it now has a better understanding of the development direction to take for 2024, the two-time champion warns that Aston Martin must be prepared to react to evolving car concepts.
“I think there are clear indications of some parts of the car that they were underperforming for a few events,” he said. “They were also different philosophies on the pitlane, but also for us in the way you try to extract the performance of these cars.
“And I think now with all the experiments and all the knowledge of this year, we think we understand better the direction to develop the car.
“But these things are moving constantly, I don’t think that there is a magic bullet and a recipe to develop the car. If so, it would be very easy for everyone.
“But things that you maybe think now and trust now, in six months’ time because maybe the trend on the pitlane is to maybe move the airflow in a different way, they get outdated and very quickly. So we need to keep an eye [out].”
