The midfield area of the Formula 1 grid is extremely competitive at the start of the 2025 season and Aston Martin and Fernando Alonso are among that group. The equality between several teams means that the team is very close to scoring points and, at the same time, far away, as a mistake condemns any of them to almost the last positions.
There will be no qualitative leap for Aston Martin, which is already asking for patience
In this sense, however, both the Silverstone team and the rest of the teams know that it will not be easy to make a qualitative leap that will allow them to rise meteorically, but if the work is carried out according to each one’s approach, it is more possible that this will happen.
Perhaps not to win races or to fight for podiums in every Grand Prix, but to be in the hunt and to position themselves as the leader of that midfield. That is what Aston Martin is looking for and aiming for. An Aston Martin that, after a rather irregular start, outside the goal of even scoring points, after the Japanese GP and before flying to Bahrain, Fernando Alonso’s team has asked for patience.
Again. As they did in the second half of 2023, as they wanted to do at the beginning of 2024, as they said at the end of last season… and which they have now repeated. They ask for patience. Both from the Asturian driver and from the rest of the team’s and Spanish fans to overcome a situation that is not what they imagined. Not with the economic power of Lawrence Stroll, not with the infrastructures they have developed and set up, such as their new factory and wind tunnel, not bringing in Adrian Newey…
The reading is easy: money is not everything, although it helps
A simple reading of the current situation of Fernando Alonso’s team tells us that, before being bought by Lawrence Stroll in 2019, they won races with less money and half the staff they have today. Going back to more recent times, we know that technical director Dan Fallows, fresh from Red Bull, made a great car, but that from there on he was unable to improve it. Nor was he able to create a successor that was up to the task.
In between, an impressive new headquarters, the signing of a world-class driver like Alonso, a flood of renowned engineers and money, lots of money. Of all the elements to be world champion, Aston Martin today cannot say that it lacks any.
However, the balance of what we have seen since mid-2023 is quite poor. And what is worse is that there are other cars such as Alpine, Racing Bulls or Haas, which until less than a year ago were slightly behind in terms of performance, and that at the start of 2025 they are not only ahead, but it is expected that in each race they will not be left behind, but will be fighting with them for a final position in the points.
The key is to calibrate the wind tunnel well
The key to awakening the car’s potential lies in calibrating the wind tunnel well. Former driver and brand ambassador Pedro de la Rosa was cautious when it came to predicting the date of the improvements: “We’ll have to wait a little longer, be a little more patient and wait for the improvements to be introduced on the track”.
“We still don’t know 100%, in the sense that last year it wasn’t that there was a bad correlation, it’s just that the improvements we brought were expected to give us considerably more time per lap, and then the reality was less”, the former driver explains.
In view of this, the Silverstone factory is working against the clock to get the first new parts of the year to Fernando Alonso’s car as soon as possible before ‘abandoning’ the current year’s project. About “eight to ten weeks” is what Ben Fitzgerald, director of operations, gave before focusing on the car for the designated year 2026. At the start of the European tour, within the timeframe indicated by Fitzgerald, a consistent aerodynamic package is expected, as it is almost every year. Nothing new so far.
The improvements planned for Imola could be brought forward to Miami
By then, Aston Martin will have already gathered enough information to begin to understand their car and know where it should be developed under the baton of Adrian Newey. However, the Emilia-Romagna event in Imola on May 18 is a long way off and the first new parts may arrive before then. They will not be in Bahrain, the next race in a few days, due to the lack of data on the AMR25. But they could be seen at events like Miami, before the Italian one, and after Saudi Arabia in Jeddah.
Until now, Aston Martin did not want to look at the others. They focused exclusively on their work: “We have focused on ourselves, we have simply kept our heads down to get the data and information we need before the season starts in a couple of weeks”.
As such, 2024 should have been the year of confirmation for the green team, and yet they were overtaken by the cars at the bottom of the table, such as Alpine, which managed to get out of the difficult last place on the grid and even climb onto the podium with both of its drivers in the penultimate race of the year. With nuances, of course, but it was an improvement that Aston Martin failed to see throughout the year.
The man from Oviedo was not very optimistic before and after the last races, and predicts complicated races in at least the next two events, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. His only glimmer of satisfaction comes from the fact that, as he said in China and Japan, they are beginning to identify where the AMR25 can improve over the course of the year. That is, if they don’t want Fernando Alonso to start getting anxious and suffering, as he did in his time at McLaren-Honda. At least they know where to start.