Fernando Alonso appeared before the press in the run-up to the Bahrain F1 GP in a slightly more upbeat mood than at the end of the Japanese GP, where he appeared very disappointed with the performance of Aston Martin in the race, highlighting the team’s current difficulties.
Fernando Alonso optimistic about the championship
Fernando Alonso has been along the same lines since the start of the F1 World Championship and has once again stated that there is tremendous equality between all the teams and that any detail during each weekend can make a big difference in terms of grid positions and that is why they must continue to give their all every weekend.
“It’s all very close, the championship is very long and we won’t give up”
“We are motivated to work harder and bring new parts to every race we can. We are not going to give up”
Conclusions after the start of the championship
Fernando Alonso admits that the conclusions to date are not at all positive, you only have to look at the results, but the problems they have encountered when the weather conditions are a little adverse, as seen in the Japan race, are striking.
“We have learned a few things in the first three races. Slow corners and top speed are possibly a weakness”.
For this reason, he hopes that the team will take note of these problems in the aerodynamics and the configuration of the car, which are key to solving these errors in the next improvements and to being more competitive. These improvements are on the way but are not yet ready, although they hope to be able to introduce them in the Miami GP or in the arrival of F1 in Europe.
Praise for Verstappen
After the race in Japan, Alonso did not hesitate to praise Max Verstappen for his weekend, where he achieved pole position and won the race ahead of McLaren, a team that is clearly ahead of the rest at the start of this season. For the Asturian driver, the New Zealander is head and shoulders above everyone else, and if luck is on his side, he could end up being the best driver in the history of Formula 1 in terms of titles.
“He’s the best, I’ve been saying it for years. He’s reached a level that the rest of us haven’t yet. I like it when people don’t win with the best car”.
Fernando Alonso compared Verstappen’s current situation with his own in 2012 when he was driving for Ferrari, where he went into the last race with a chance of becoming world champion despite not having the best or even the second best car on the grid.
Forecast for the race
Given that Aston Martin has not brought any improvements, the only new information the team has is the data obtained in previous races and in the pre-season tests that were held on this circuit, albeit with much more difficult environmental conditions than those currently prevailing. In this sense, a race is expected to be hot but without other environmental inclemencies, so it is to be hoped that the Aston Martin can move up a few places on the grid. If we count on Fernando Alonso returning to his best level, it is possible that we will see him get into the points during the race, but the complicated objective will be to get into Q3 on Saturday to be able to fight with the best.
Aston Martin has a lot of work ahead of it in the next few races if it wants to get back on track in a World Championship that has not started well at all, but there are plenty of races for them to find solutions and put the AMR25 in the points to get better results.