Alonso ranks Suzuka sixth as one of his best performances

Fernando Alonso believes his performance at the Japanese Grand Prix, where he finished sixth, was one of the best of his career.

Qualifying in fifth place, Alonso had warned that he feels he regularly overachieves in qualifying and then slips back to the team’s average position over a race distance. Aston Martin had an upgrade at Suzuka and Sunday’s race saw Alonso only drop behind Charles Leclerc, holding off Oscar Piastri for much of the final stint and earning a top-six finish he rates highly.

“I think it was my best weekend in I don’t know… Inside the top five ever, for me,” Alonso said. “P5 in qualifying, that lap, and P6 in the race is completely out of position. So very proud.

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“I think we are the fifth fastest team by a good margin to the fourth and a good margin to the sixth. We are quite established there. There is no way to compare us with Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes, so that’s why to finish P5 and P6 is completely unusual.

“We did it in Australia as well – we finished P6 – here P6 again, P5 I think in Jeddah, so we are executing the races very well and the others are experimenting a little bit with the strategy and other things. We are capitalizing on those, but we need to improve the pace, for sure.”

Pushed on how he comes to the conclusion of the pecking order, Alonso added: “I drive the car on track. I see it.”

The two-time world champion had praise for the way Aston Martin is delivering as a race team, but wants to see further gains made in terms of outright car performance.

“I think there are a couple of things in the pipeline to improve the car. I think this first package is just the first baseline of what we will introduce later in the season,” he said. “So we still need to analyze many things, but as I said we are executing very well on Sundays, maximizing the points or even more than what we deserve normally.

“Pit stops were great, actually on the second stop when I saw the green light and I went, I said ‘Maybe they didn’t change all four tires’ because for me this felt like the fastest ever. So I’m curious to see the time.

“There are small things here and there that are making it possible to get the result, but I think fundamentally the pace is not where we want to be, and this is something we need to focus on now.”