This past weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix was not ideal territory for Aston Martin. However, Fernando Alonso managed a very creditable seventh place finish considering the car’s lack of top speed on the Red Bull Ring circuit.
Aston Martin’s performance is improving: the gap to McLaren was reduced to half a second in Austria
The Asturian driver had to work hard for his position, holding off Liam Lawson to get that extra bit of speed that allowed him to escape from the rest of the cars in the midfield until, in a display of courage and cunning, he managed to get away from his Sauber protégé, Gabriel Bortoleto, who was already closing in on him in the final laps. Finally, the Spaniard managed to secure 7th place after holding on to a position he had held for more than half the race.
After a start to the season in which Aston Martin was on a par with Sauber, following the package of improvements introduced at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, the performance of the car has taken a quantum leap and in Austria they were less than half a second behind the McLarens.
Lance Stroll even finished fourth on the first day of practice on Friday, while Alonso flirted with Q3, although he fell just short. In any case, it is undeniable that both the Spaniard and the Silverstone team itself have made progress and, although there is still a long way to go, especially to close the gap with the four leading teams, as Fernando said, it is very important to continue in this vein.
Alonso and Aston Martin prove that you can go from problems to great joys
Because yes, Aston Martin has made progress and can now rub shoulders with the cars that are looking for something more than just scraping a few points in the race. But no less valuable is the fact that if they have got this far, it is because they knew they had to make significant progress, as the other teams have also done. So maintaining that performance could earn them a bigger prize in such a competitive and tight grid, especially from fifth place.
Towards this. Fernando Alonso had a few words to say in Austria that summed up very well what could happen between now and the end of the year. You can go from problems to great joy if everything goes well from one moment to the next: “You can crash out in Q1 or you can be in the top five right now,” emphasizing that no car will be in the same position in a few races’ time. “We’re all within two tenths of a second,” he added. The equality throughout the season, although now at Aston Martin it is seen from a different perspective.
An optimistic future: “Performance is at the highest level”
Now Aston Martin is looking to the future with optimism, once its off-track growth process has come to an end. The Technology Campus is now fully operational and, although departments such as aerodynamics still need to expand a little more, the team is already much better prepared for greater aspirations.
“Aston Martin has changed a lot from 2021 to today,” recalls Luca Furbatto, the team’s engineering director. “We were a small team, still based at the Jordan facilities, but now we enjoy a beautiful, state-of-the-art facility.”
This year, we’ve seen that once the upgrade package was installed in Imola, we’ve made it to Q3 several times in a row. I think we’ve reversed the trend, and that’s a very positive sign,” says Luca Furbatto. An aerodynamic package that not only lifted Aston Martin and Alonso from the bottom of the grid, but also allowed the team to put a dark and worrying period behind them.
“I’m very happy,” said Alonso after Canada. “It’s a good time for driving and feeling with the car. At the beginning it was a challenge, we had inconsistencies and in every corner we felt something different. Now with the new package I can attack to the maximum. The performance is at the highest level,” said the Spaniard.