Why Aston Martin has fallen back
Fernando Alonso was consistently on the podium early in the season, but not anymore.
When 2023 began, Aston Martin had the fastest car in F1 behind Red Bull. Their 41-year-old ace driver Fernando Alonso was on the podium in five of the first six races.
But as F1 enters its traditional mid-season break, things are no longer so rosy for the team that provided much excitement at the start of 2023.
Aston Martin has now been off the podium in the past four races (five if you count the Belgium sprint). The team openly admits they’ve fallen behind Mercedes, McLaren, and Ferrari in the pecking order.
Their performance this past weekend in Spa was fairly modest. The sprint yielded zero points as Lance Stroll finished 11th and Alonso uncharacteristically crashed out.
In Sunday’s race, the team had cause for optimism with Alonso finishing 5th.
He avoided incidents and greatly benefitted from Carlos Sainz and Oscar Piastri reitring; George Russell getting a poor start; and Lando Norris having a messy race.
Lance Stroll, meanwhile, finished 9th. He ran the less-optimal one-stop strategy.
Post-race, Alonso raved about his pace and pointed out that he kept a Mercedes and McLaren behind him.
That’s true, but what he didn’t mention was that Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, who finished 3rd and 4th, were ahead by more than a pitstop at the end of the race. When 2023 began, that sort of gap would’ve been unfathomable for Aston Martin.
So, what’s changed?
Essentially, Aston Martin’s upgrades - the biggest of which arrived in Canada - have created unintended side effects.
Team boss Mike Krack heavily implied this when he attended a press conference on Friday in Belgium. During that press conference, Krack agreed with a journalist that Aston Martin was now only the 5th-quickest team in F1.
“We have made developments to the car lately and it is true what you say, we have dropped,” Krack said. He explained that developing cars was very complex and new upgrades often created “other effects”.
Still, Krack said he was “quite confident” Aston Martin had discovered the problems. “We have to now iron out these issues that we have introduced … as quick as possible.”
According to Alonso, that process has already begun.
After his 5th place in Spa, he revealed the team had changed “a few characteristics” on the car and he felt “it really paid off”. The car felt great during the race, he said, adding: “It really gave me confidence”.
It’s worth noting here that Spa was never supposed to suit the high-drag Aston Martin car. The same can be said about recent races in Austria and Silverstone.
Still, Aston Martin’s lack of podiums isn’t simply because of tracks.
The race in Hungary earlier this month should’ve been one of their strongest, yet Alonso and Stroll only recorded underwhelming 9th and 10th-place finishes.
Another reason for Aston Martin’s dip in performance is the clear success of their competitors.
Mercedes has been on a much more positive trajectory since unveiling a big update back in Monaco, while McLaren has unleashed an unprecedented assault on the front of the field since introducing upgrades in Austria.
Aston Martin still has a chance to recover in the second half of 2023.
Teams behind Red Bull have been separated by notoriously fine margins this year, so even a small performance step could be good enough to leap back up the order.
Krack pointed this out during his press conference, saying: “The gaps are very small.”
“We have seen how much we have lost, and I think the most important [thing] is to recover that and try to recover a little bit more,” he said.
Aston Martin continues to hold 3rd place in the constructors’ championship, ahead of Ferrari and McLaren. Meanwhile, Fernando Alonso is still 3rd in the drivers’ championship, but he only leads Lewis Hamilton by a single point.
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