F1 News: Fernando Alonso makes Aston Martin upgrade promise for 2024

fernando alonso, alpine — Photo: © IMAGO

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Alonso makes Aston Martin upgrade promise for 2024

The team tailed off halfway through 2023 after a brilliant start

Tyler Rowlinson

Thursday 22 February 2024 15:57

Fernando Alonso has insisted that Aston Martin will not repeat last season's mistakes in their upgrade programme.

The Silverstone-based team took a huge leap forward at the start of last season, with Alonso grabbing three consecutive third place finishes in the opening three rounds and a total of six podiums in the first eight races.

However, Aston Martin took the wrong direction with their development around the halfway point and results began to fade.

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Fernando Alonso finished fourth in the championship in 2023

The Spaniard achieved six podiums in the first eight races

But Aston Martin made mistakes with their development packages at the halfway point

Alonso: We won't make the same mistakes

But the team reignited their earlier form towards the end and Alonso finished the season in fourth – his best championship finish since 2013.

Speaking with Autosport about the new AMR24, the Spaniard is confident that the team will not make the same mistakes with upgrades as last season.

"I'm confident," he said.

"If not, I could not maybe sleep for the last two months! But I think we did a lot of experiments and a lot of changes back and forth in terms of understanding the problems and the direction and the paths that we need to follow this year on the car.

"I think we understood a lot of things, and with this year's car we intend to improve some of those weaknesses that we saw in terms of developing the car last year that we maybe got into the wrong direction a few times, and we understood a little bit too late.

"Hopefully we have that knowledge, those difficulties from last year were lessons that we took on board for the '24 car, and we will see the result.

"I think we had a good step forward this winter, maybe not as big as last year, because last year the baseline was very poor. And this year, the baseline was very strong already last year's, which is understandable."

Red Bull Aston Martin Fernando Alonso