Alonso disappointed with ’24 so far but praises Budapest updates

Fernando Alonso admits to be disappointed in the first half of F1 2024, as he dwells into the updates and potential of step like its rivals.

Having had a start like no other at the onset of the 2023 F1 season, Aston Martin has had quite the downfall in terms of performance and results. The updates haven’t worked out whether it was the second half of 2023 or the start of 2024 season.

They are firmly behind the Top 4 teams but slightly ahead of the latter half. Although at odd races, they have to fend off the likes of Alpine and or Visa Cash App RB or Haas, etc. It has been a disappointment overall for the team which is on a hiring spree.

“A little bit disappointed,” said Alonso to media. “We cannot hide the fact that we are fighting, with Williams, RB and Alpine last year, we were looking maybe to the top four teams. Now they are out of reach, and we are just defending from the guys behind. Even at the beginning of the year in qualifying, especially, we were always top five, top six, in the mix.

“So definitely a lot of work to do for us in the summer break, and the second part of the year. We will not give up. We need to work,” summed up Alonso, who noted that the latest spec of updates brought about in Budapest did work well. They are still to extract the full potential out of it, but it felt to be going in the right direction.

It is a confidence booster but how much they can do with to penetrate the Top 4 is unclear. “It [the Budapest updates] responded well. We are quite happy with how the new package worked in Hungary. It’s doing what the wind tunnel was saying and we had a very good correlation, which was very important after a few other upgrades that were a bit more up and down.

“The team is quite happy with Budapest, not forgetting that this is only the first step and we’re still long way of where we want to be, but now that it seems that we found a path and we see on track what we see on the wind tunnel, maybe it’s easier for us to add downforce now without any scare of not seeing it on track.

“We are a little bit more calm after the Budapest upgrade in terms of what is coming for the future or what will come in the future. Maybe the team has now a better understanding of where to put performance without or with the safety that it will add lap time. It will make the car faster so this was a key upgrade for us.

“And it worked as expected so it gave us more confidence for sure, yes,” summed up Alonso, who is banking on step made by Mercedes and McLaren as a benchmark after their own step at the start of the 2023 F1 season. He feels Aston Martin can still do it with the people they have onboard, it is just about making it work.

“Both Mercedes this year and McLaren last year,” said Alonso. “Both of them, they proved that it’s possible to recover a significant gap to the leaders. Mercedes was fighting with us for four races and now they won two Grand Prix’s. McLaren was out of Q1 for a few races at the beginning of last year and they were fighting for victories.

“So, it is possible. It happened to us, it happened to the team to understand the upgrades, where are the key parts of the car to find performance, how to find that performance, we have the facilities, we will have the wind tunnel at the end of the year probably ready. So, there are a couple of people to look at this.”