Fernando Alonso says Aston Martin extracted the “maximum” result possible with the fifth fastest car in the field across the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend.
The Silverstone squad struggled for speed throughout at the Hungaroring circuit, with Alonso enduring a lonely race to lead team-mate Lance Stroll home in ninth and 10th.
It marked a continuation of Aston Martin’s recent regression down the order that has witnessed it increasingly lose touch with Mercedes in the battle for second place in the Constructors’ Championship.
When asked if rounding out the points positions was the best Aston Martin could have hoped for in Budapest, Alonso said: “Yeah, yeah I think so.
“Yeah we were not quick enough to challenge anyone in front and we did not have anyone behind, three points, nine and tenth, maximum today, so let’s see next week.”
Aston Martin’s AMR23 car has typically performed stronger in race trim than during a single lap over the course of 2023.
However, when questioned on whether the competitiveness of his package was better on Sunday than in qualifying, Alonso, who qualified eighth, stated “It was similar”.
The two-time World Champion expanded by underlining that Aston Martin currently possesses the fifth-fastest car on the grid on the evidence of the past two rounds.
“I think the last two races we struggle a bit, at Silverstone the Safety Car helped a bit to finish seventh, which was better than our pace, in Silverstone and today ninth is probably our pace, yep, behind the Mercedes, Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren, which is more or less what we saw in qualifying and the race,” he acknowledged.
After scoring six top-three finishes in the first eight races following his winter switch from Alpine, Alonso hasn’t visited the podium rostrum once in the three rounds since.
Although the Spaniard accepts that the compact field spread is prompting unlikely surprises each weekend, he asserts that a representative order materialises in the race.
Therefore, Alonso has challenged the British marque to haul itself back to the front of the top teams chasing Red Bull, having now dropped to the back of that quartet.
“I mean every race we will love to understand and we will have many questions and we never know exactly what is the cause of it,” he said concerning Aston Martin being out-developed.
“Austria Hulkenberg were fourth after qualifying, so we were all surprise, Silverstone Williams were very fast and we were surprised, here Alfa Romeo was very fast, we were all surprised, then normally in the race everything balances out and the big team they finish in front, yeah, we are just in the back end of those top teams so we need to get back to the front end of that group.”
Another top-four result for Lewis Hamilton has seen Alonso’s advantage in third in the Drivers’ Championship cut to only six points ahead of this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix.
Meanwhile, Aston Martin is now a lengthy 39 points adrift of Mercedes and only 17 points ahead of Ferrari, who have also been caught out by McLaren’s recent resurgence.
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