Fernando Alonso is no longer hiding it; he seems to have lost his optimism after seeing, for yet another year, that he continues to drive one of the worst cars on the grid. It is frustrating, to say the least, to see one of the best drivers of all time in Formula 1 behind the wheel of one of the worst cars on the circuit for yet another year. A mixture of bad luck and poor decisions have marked the Asturian’s career and it seems that they are also marking the end of his career.
Fernando Alonso cannot give any more on the track
This is what Fernando Alonso said after the end of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix: “The car has given everything it can on the track: he and the team that accompanies him every weekend have got the most out of the car, and it is the team at Silvertone that needs to give something more to get the car out of the back of the grid.
“We need something from the factory, not from the track. We’ve run out of ideas.”
Aston Martin’s pleas already betray despair and hopelessness, and although the first upgrades from Aston Martin are expected in the form of parts for the next two races, he is convinced that they will not be enough to put the AMR25 at the front of the midfield. To do that, the car needs to improve a lot.
“We need to improve by half a second, more or less. That’s the deficit we have now to be at the top of the midfield. I don’t know if we’ll be able to do it with the upgrades during the year, but we’ll try.”
Alonso and the new upgrades
The first package of upgrades arrives for the next races, Miami and Italy, and Alonso hopes that the car will improve slightly, but not by the half-second disadvantage they have over the other teams, given the updates that Aston Martin has received in recent years, which, far from improving, have worsened the performance of the respective cars. However, he remains hopeful about the second package planned for the second half of the championship, knowing that some teams in recent years have got their updates right.
“For now, no (there will be updates that improve by 5 tenths), but we have seen in other years that other teams have unlocked a second of performance. McLaren two years ago, Mercedes and Alpine last year. There is nothing to tell us that we are heading in that direction, but sometimes you put a new part on the car and everything changes from black to white. That is the hope we have.”
Above the predictions
Fernando Alonso revealed that Aston Martin’s predictions, not for the race but for qualifying, put them out after Q1. However, the Spaniard is managing, with three sets of tires, to get the car into Q2.
Aston Martin’s predictions: “Never! (they put the AMR25 in Q2).” “We always go into qualifying thinking we’ll stay in Q1, that’s why we use all three sets of tires.”
Fernando Alonso’s words show that he is desperate about the situation at Aston Martin. The first package of upgrades will arrive between the next two races. It is anyone’s guess how the AMR25 will respond to the new parts, which are the first from the new wind tunnel and the first from Aston Martin’s new project to begin testing whether its plans for next season have any chance of meeting the high expectations of a team that wants to fight to be the best in F1 but is currently one of the worst. It looks like another year of suffering is in store, watching one of the best drivers in the world driving one of the worst cars.