Aston Martin got here out of the blocks flying in 2023 with six podiums for the Spaniard throughout the primary eight races.
However as rivals Mercedes, Ferrari and particularly McLaren all made greater beneficial properties over the previous 12 months, Aston has discovered it laborious to maintain up within the improvement race, sliding to fifth within the pecking order.
Whereas its progress on monitor is stalling, the Stroll-owned crew remains to be in a build-up section in its new Silverstone headquarters, with a brand new wind tunnel nonetheless on the best way.
That funding to match Stroll’s lofty ambitions, having made a verbal strategy to Pink Bull’s Adrian Newey too, is underpinning Alonso’s religion that the crew will be capable to match and the surpass the event charge of its opponents within the close to future.
When requested by Autosport if he is assured Aston is beginning to have all the appropriate instruments in place to not be outpaced in F1’s improvement race, the two-time F1 world champion replied: “It is a advanced sport.
“McLaren, till Austria, race seven final 12 months, they had been preventing for Q1. They’ve an important crew, nice folks, nice amenities, and an important model behind. They went out of Q1.
“You discover one thing that the automotive is alive, after which you might be altering all the things. It is the identical for us.
“Final 12 months till mid-season we had been the crew to take a look at and to repeat. Instantly you may shortly take two or three steps backwards.
“So, now we have to give attention to ourselves, get again there.
“Totally different to different groups, now we have an important chief with Lawrence. We’ve not solely the proprietor of the crew, but in addition a really extraordinarily aggressive particular person behind.
“We’ll sort things faster than different groups, I believe, because of him.”
Aston upgraded its automotive in Imola, however whereas the sentiment is that its new components are working as meant, they haven’t essentially made the automotive simpler to drive.
Each Alonso and Lance Stroll struggled with the AMR24’s dealing with, accentuated by an out-of-character crash for the Spaniard in FP3.
A pitlane begin relegated Imola to a check session for Alonso, however he felt that was helpful to try to get on high of the automotive’s weaknesses.
“If you end up not preventing for high 5 or high seven or no matter, generally you turn to a set-up factor or check weekend, as a result of to complete P9… I want to repair the issues of the automotive, hand over that weekend and begin from scratch on the following one,” he defined.
“It is what occurred in Imola slightly bit, in FP3 after which in quali and the race, which clearly on one aspect is sweet as a result of perhaps you speed up slightly bit the repair of the issues.”