Alonso: “The car is peaky, the pursuit of adding downforce is fragile”

Adam Cooper
25/07/2024

Fernando Alonso says that his Aston Martin Formula 1 team is “a little bit more calm” after the upgrades introduced for the AMR24 worked successfully.

This season the Silverstone team has struggled to get performance out of the car, and earlier upgrades haven’t always worked as planned.

Despite the fact that the team came away from Budapest with only a humble 10th place for Lance Stroll Alonso says that the new parts made a difference.

“I think we are quite happy with how the new package worked in Hungary,” he said. “It’s doing what the wind tunnel was saying.

“And we had a very good correlation, which was very important, after a few other upgrades were a little bit more up and down.

“So I think the team is quite happy with Budapest. Not forgetting that this is only the first step, and we are still long way off where we want to be.

“But now that it seems that we found a path, and we see on track what we see on the wind tunnel, maybe it’s easier for us to add downforce now, without any scare of not seeing it on track.”

Underlining that he now expects upgrades to work well from now on Alonso noted: “We are a little bit more calm after the Budapest upgrade in terms of what is coming for the future, or what will come in the future.

“Maybe the team has now a better understanding of where to put performance, with the safety that it will add lap time, and it will make the car faster. So this was a key upgrade for us, I think, and it worked as expected. So it gives us more confidence, for sure.”

Alonso

Alonso says the progress made by rival teams has shown Aston Martin that a package can be improved.

“Mercedes this year and McLaren last year, both of them they proved that it’s possible to recover a significant gap to the leaders,” he said.

“Mercedes was fighting with us for four races, and now they won two Grand Prix. McLaren was out of Q1 for few races at the beginning of last year, and they were fighting for victory. So it is possible.

“It’s up to us, it’s up to the team to understand the upgrades. Where are the key parts of the car to find performance? How to find that performance? We have the facilities. We will have the wind tunnel at the end of the year.”

In the short-term Alonso expects the AMR24 to be competitive in Belgium this weekend.

“I don’t see any reason why not,” he said. “I think Budapest probably was, at least on our expectations, a little bit more difficult. Maybe Spa is a little bit better for our package.

“But we changed the car so much in Hungary that we come here with some extra tests to do, after all the learnings of Budapest. So I think FP1, FP2, we still have to dedicate them to test the new package. And let’s see where we are.”

He added: “We have a lot of test ideas to maximise the package. But also the weather is not looking great for tomorrow, so maybe we don’t have that possibility.

“It will be gold if it’s dry, because I think we can optimise a little bit the car, and then we need to be in the points. Both cars in the points, both cars in Q3, that’s the clear target.”

Alonso made an interesting observation about why it’s so hard for teams to optimise their cars under the current regulations.

“The pursuit of adding downforce the car is more fragile, and more peaky on everything that you do,” he said. “Obviously one thing is testing cars on the wind tunnel, on ideal and consistent conditions.

“And on a racetrack, here in Spa you go at 60km/h in Turn 1, you go at 300 in Tune 10-11. The last corner, it goes uphill, I think, 8%.

“The car is never stable. It’s never square, you always have all your different ride heights. Let’s say the track is the real test for an F1 car at the moment.”

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