Fernando Alonso wants to continue the fight at the top. After a first year at Aston Martin in which he surprised by having a car at the beginning of the year capable of fighting for podiums consistently in the first races of the season, the Asturian has long been confident that the green team can make another quality step this winter to create a very competitive 2024 car. And that is precisely what the Asturian said in an interview given to the official website of the Aston Martin team.
“The expectations? I don’t think they will change much because there are so many unknowns every season. In Formula One anything can happen. When we go out on track in the winter test or the first race next year, I think we will see what happens and we will be open to the goals we set for the championship. Hopefully we’ll be competitive again, regularly fighting for points and podiums, and hopefully for our first victory, that’s the dream, but we can’t underestimate the challenge.”declared the Asturian driver for the 2024 F1 season.
“We exceeded expectations this year because it was low. But This season has been incredible. “If we set expectations that are too high, unrealistically high, there is a risk that the opposite will happen.”he added
The advantage of this is his second year with the team
“This being my second year with the team will help. I don’t need to do a lot of the things I had to do earlier this year.”“I don’t have to put names on all the faces, I don’t have to make seat adjustments, learn the terminology and do all the other adaptations that have to be made when you’re a new driver in a team,” argued him on how to unlock more of his car’s potential.next season.
“Everything will be easier. We will be able to focus more on performance and preparation for the first races from day one. We also have a very solid base to work from 2023. When we get to a race, the work to be done We are an optimization of what we did this year.”
“The 2022 car is probably not enough as a reference for us this year and in many weekends we start from scratch. 2024, it should be easier in terms of preparation and we can focus more on details,” he added.
It should be remembered that after Aston Martin’s excellent start in 2023, the green team remained stagnant in the development of its vehicle in the face of the greatest number of evolutions from large factories with more experience such as Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren. Despite this, Alonso was able to shine thanks to his hands and took advantage of the complex track conditions to achieve surprising podiums such as in Canada or Zandvoort. And finally, after a bump in the car’s evolution, Aston Martin managed to open up more potential for Alonso to achieve another podium in Brazil with a real exhibition against Pérez’s Red Bull.
What Alonso wants from Aston Martin in 2024
In that sense, Alonso, in the last race of the year, already gave a clear role to Aston Martin in the statements on DAZN F1: “The 33rd victory? We will see. Now we have to do a good job. In I think we have a lot of homework to do in the coming weeks and months. The car didn’t finish as strong as we started the season and we have to understand that very well. In Abu Dhabi we have a car that is just good enough to compete in AlphaTauri until the last lap and that’s not enough to get 33 and anything like that. So you have to get your act together.” That’s what he said after getting out of his Aston Martin in the last GP of the year.
In this area, in the statements collected by the official F1 portal, Alonso emphasized the importance of having in 2024 a car capable of being faster in a greater variety of layouts and conditions and, more than all, having a higher speed in the straight, something that involves good aerodynamic efficiency to achieve less air resistance in a straight line.
“Maybe one of the weak points is that the car has to operate in a very narrow window. “It’s the same as everyone else, but it seems like we’re struggling a bit and it would be nice if we can always perform at a stable level next year,” he said.
“Also, if we can improve the speed on the straights… I think that was, in terms of performance, our weak point, always being too slow on the straights. “If we wanted to be as fast as the others, we had to lower the rear wing, and then we were also slow in the corners, so that’s probably the loop we couldn’t get out of. ,” he concluded.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Rose Herman and I work as an author for Today Times Live. My expertise lies in writing about sports, a passion of mine that has been with me since childhood. As part of my job, I provide comprehensive coverage on everything from football to tennis to golf.
