The 2025 season is not off to a good start for Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin. The team arrived at the Bahrain tests with renewed energy and eager to put all the work done during the winter break on the track. The tests have not gone as well as could be expected. The rivals are showing greater speed
The pre-season tests are over for Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard had to stand in for Lance Stroll at the last minute due to the Canadian’s physical problems, compounded by problems with the sensors on the first day. The spontaneous overheating of the AMR25 at the pit lane exit right at the start of the last day of testing. Fortunately, his mechanics were able to assist him and the problem was not serious.
And the tests have been full of complications for Aston Martin. The AMR25 is better than the AMR24. However, the team has not been able to gather all the information they wanted due, first of all, to the problem with the car’s sensors, which did not allow the team to drive as much as they would have liked during the afternoon of the first day and which took them more than 40 minutes to change. Then, that same day, there were the telemetry failures with the car.
Newey, the F1 engineering star who came from Red Bull, will have to come to the rescue. He will have to get to work right away to improve Aston Martin’s performance starting today. The idea is that he can improve the errors that have been detected in the car in time for the first races of the season.
The problems with the car
As their name suggests, the Bahrain tests have allowed all the teams to test their cars and make adjustments ahead of Australia. In the case of Aston Martin, these days of testing have shown that the car has high degradation, but is slightly better than last year.
Both Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, after testing the car, believe it is more predictable and that the DRS is effective. In general, the car is better than last year, but in relative terms, other cars have improved considerably more. In fact, according to the tests these days, the team could be eighth or seventh in the order to start the season. There are expected to be some improvements in the car that still has correlation problems.
Fernando Alonso asks for patience at Aston Martin
Fernando Alonso has participated in the first session of the third day of testing, the last one for him. In this last session he set the eighth fastest time on the grid with a time of 1:32.084. After finishing the test, the Asturian driver spoke to journalists about his feelings and the car. “Yes, we have to wait. I think we have some positive aspects to the car. We’re not going to go into details, but obviously the data and the evaluation look good,” said the Aston Martin driver.
“There is a step forward compared to last year’s car. And there are also some negatives, like probably all the things we need to fix and improve for Australia later in the season,” he continued. ”So we are relatively happy knowing that the midfield is very close and that we will have to have perfect weekends if we want to score points. But this is perhaps not a surprise and we will try to improve throughout the season,” concluded Fernando Alonso.
A season that is just around the corner. With the tests over, the start of the competition is already on the horizon. It will be in just two weeks, in Australia, where we will be able to see how each of the teams perform with the adjustments they manage to make in the days leading up to that date.