Aston Martin’s fleet this season would seem to be completely uncompetitive.
Fernando Alonso doesn’t smile much. It would seem that another season full of adversity is ahead. PDO
Based on the F1 tests, it is usually very difficult to say anything about the power relations between the teams, but something can be concluded from them.
The unanimous verdict of the Formula people at the moment is that Aston Martin is in really bad trouble.
Fernando Alonso has thus somehow ended up once again in a situation where he has an uncompetitive car in his hands.
The two-time world champion and winner of 32 races has celebrated the last time in May 2013, i.e. 13 years ago. Since then, he has found a way almost every year to get uncompetitive equipment down.
In particular, his infancy with McLaren-Honda 2015–2017 comes to mind, but the period also includes difficult years with Ferrari, Renault-powered McLaren and Alpine. Even in the current team Aston Martin, the result curve collapsed ugly as the 2023 season progressed.
Everything wrong
Aston Martin designed by Adrian Newey would not seem to be in the top bracket. PDO
The expectations for this season were huge.
Billionaire Lawrence Stroll attracted by goldfinger Adrian Newey to the stable. In Newey’s wake, Honda power sources were acquired from Red Bull. In addition, Stroll has spent hundreds of millions on the development of the premises of Aston Martin’s F1 team.
What did you get? So far the slowest and most unreliable car of this season.
Alonso and Lance Stroll have accumulated the fewest laps of all in this season’s winter tests. Things went wrong even before the actual official tests, when the car was not finished by the start of the shakedown tests in Barcelona. The team therefore lost a huge amount of development time compared to others.
Barcelona was also missing Williams. However, the famous British team has shown in Bahrain that it is competitive with other teams. For Aston Martin, the situation is more complicated.
When asked to say something positive about the first week of testing in Bahrain, Lance Stroll said “the weather is better than in England”. The sarcastic throw told a lot about the team’s problems.
The problems have been openly acknowledged. Due to the unreliability, the team has lost enormously valuable laps, during which it could have collected data to facilitate the development work. This could also make the car faster.
The problem areas are the localized cooling and the gearbox. The change to Honda’s power sources has therefore produced problems for the team that it was not prepared for in advance. Fixing problems of such fundamental quality takes time.
Did Alonso get mad?
Alonso’s runs ended prematurely on Thursday. PDO
The problem with Honda is something Alonso is guaranteed to still have nightmares about. The 2015-2017 seasons produced countless memorable outbursts of emotion from the Spaniard for F1 fans, but for Alonso, McLaren and Honda they were pure pain.
Alonso, who has never been known as a driver in control of his emotions, may have given a taste of his heat already at this point in the season.
The Spaniard’s runs ended prematurely today as well, when Aston Martin was left on the side of Sakhir’s track. Based on the TV pictures, the cause seemed to be in the power source.
Alonso rolled along the track for a while, until suddenly the car’s engine started screaming at full revs.
Of course, it is possible that Alonso’s car’s gas stuck unexpectedly. But given Alonso’s penchant for temper tantrums, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Spaniard let his frustrations show once again.