Lewis Hamilton sends F1 rivals 'nervous' Aston Martin warning

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Hamilton sends F1 rivals 'nervous' Aston Martin warning

The seven-time world champion has been talking about their attempts to catch Red Bull

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Saturday 9 December 2023 19:57

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Lewis Hamilton has explained how Aston Martin's performance in the 2023 season will act as a guide for what Mercedes should be doing in order to catch Red Bull in 2024.

The Brackley-based team were well off the pace of the dominant Red Bulls last season, and weren't able to claim a single race victory.

Although they did manage to beat both Ferrari and Aston Martin to second place in the constructors' standings, they were further away from the world champions in performance than they were in 2022.

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Aston Martin, on the other hand, arguably made the biggest jump in performance on the whole grid, going from being back markers in 2022 to being eight-time podium sitters in 2023, with Fernando Alonso enjoying what he called his 'best season ever' at the age of 42.

Fernando Alonso has been mixing with the very best once again since moving to Aston Martin

Lewis Hamilton endured an inconsistent season in 2023, whilst rival Max Verstappen stormed to the world championship title

Mercedes are desperately trying to find a way to become regular race winners again

Mercedes' plans for Red Bull challenge

Now, Hamilton has explained how Mercedes are going to go about attempting to bridge the gap in 2024, suggesting that Aston Martin may find it hard to keep up their performance levels.

“The thing is, with the timeline you have, and the limited resources you have, you can’t just throw it away and start from scratch," he said in comments reported by Motorsport.com.

"You can’t copy a car and start from that. Look at the Astons. They tried to copy a car and it wasn’t the same. It is not as easy as that. You have to try and take the good parts and through trial and error just try to add other parts.

“But you can imagine they are also nervous of making too big a change and it being the wrong one.

“We need to be consistently week on week adding performance, and we have higher targets than ever before because we have a massive gap to catch. That makes it really tricky.”