Fernando Alonso says his eighth place for Aston Martin in the Singapore GP was “better than our best dreams,” while stressing that the team has to “raise the level.”
Alonso qualified seventh at the Marina Bay track, helped by problems for Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
It was inevitable that the two Ferrari drivers would come through in the race, but Alonso also managed to gain a place from Nico Hulkenberg with an earlier stop.
Haas didn’t immediately respond as its focus is on championship rivals RB and Williams, and thus Alonso was able to secure eighth.
The Spaniard agreed that he couldn’t have done any better.
“Absolutely, I think behind the top four teams, just in front of Checo,” he said. “So normally it’s ninth and 10th available today.
“Finishing eighth is better than our best dreams. So again, good points, but still one lap behind, and not great pace, a difficult car to drive the whole weekend.
“So we are just lucky we got points, but it was possible to be P15 and have the same feeling.”
He added: “I just tried to follow Nico and tried to undercut him at one point. But the Ferraris should have won this race probably, they were the fastest car this weekend. So it wasn’t my race.”
The Singapore result followed a sixth place in Azerbaijan, and Alonso conceded that while the two venues had been good for Aston Martin the results haven’t disguised the overall lack of pace.
“I think now we need to raise the level,” he said. “We have some new parts coming in the next few races, hopefully they help us to come back to a stronger performance.
“We have to, I think it’s a must. The last two circuits, they were street circuits, we did good qualifyings, and then in the race, it’s difficult to overtake.
“So we consolidate those positions in the race, but this cannot hide the lack of performance that we are seeing now in the last few events.
“The team is aware of that, it’s working flat out. When the car is performing, we are here to score points.
“When the car is struggling, like we are now, we still score points because we are delivering the job, but aware of the situation at the same time.”
With most teams carrying over a lot of this year’s package to 2025 Alonso stressed that it was important to finish the year in a good place with the AMR24.
“Obviously the cars will not I think change too much from the last part of this year to next year. I don’t see any revolution on any of the teams. So we need to make sure that we find the direction.”
