Alonso wants 0.2-0.3s more from Aston but sees progress

Fernando Alonso says Aston Martin needs to make another step forward in race performance to truly fight with Mercedes and McLaren, although he felt the team made progress with upgrades at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Aston Martin started last season as the second-fastest team but the likes of Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren have recovered from issues early in 2023 to be more competitive at the beginning of this year. While Alonso was still able to secure a starting spot on the second row in Saudi Arabia, he says he was fearing a tough race given the car’s long-run performance as George Russell put him under pressure, and is calling on the team to find some more lap time.

“Definitely happy with the race result, in front of both Mercedes, one McLaren and one Ferrari is the maximum I think we can wish for at the moment,” Alonso said after finishing fifth. “We saw in the race that we still miss two or three tenths compared to Mercedes and McLaren, and maybe a little bit more compared to Red Bull and Ferrari, when in qualifying we seem to be really close. So we need to keep working on the race pace.

“When Oscar [Piastri] overtook me, and then I think Nico [Hulkenberg] was behind me but quickly George overtook Nico and they were coming so fast -- also the Mercedes -- I thought, ‘OK it’s going to be a difficult race’ but we could hold George behind us for the whole race and that was good.”

More Formula 1

Brown says Horner F1 return would be a positive, more A-B teams not so much

What the revised Formula 1 regulations are predicted to achieve in Miami

Piastri says Verstappen departure would be ‘not a great look’ but Norris thinks he’ll stay

Aston Martin has already pushed for better race performance, according to Alonso, with changes to the front corner and rear wing in Jeddah.

“I think [race pace] was better. We did introduce a new part on Friday that worked really well and I think we made a step forward in terms of performance," he said. "But we still miss maybe two or three tenths compared to McLaren and Mercedes and we will keep chasing that kind of performance. It is challenging, but it is a nice challenge and an interesting season ahead.”

Alonso noted that Aston’s performance needs to be judged against where it stood at the end of last season rather than 12 months ago.

“We need to understand what we can do better, especially for Sundays. We were fifth fastest in Abu Dhabi. We remain fifth fastest in Bahrain. So, more or less we make the same progress as everyone in the winter, which maybe was as expected. Now it's up to us to really bring that pace to the car in a better way than what we did last year. We learned a lot of things. Hopefully we can apply those learnings into this year.”