Alonso tries to keep morale up ahead of three 'painful' races for Aston Martin

The 2023 honeymoon seems a long way off for the association Alonso/Aston Martin, even if the Spaniard manages for the moment to keep his motivation and calm in the media. We know the Spaniard is sometimes a little impetuous when things do not always go his way, and the 2024 season of the English team is far from meeting his high expectations, just like that of the structure led by Lawrence Stroll and Mike Krack.

Las Vegas is no exception to the rule so far, with the seventeenth and twentieth fastest times for the two AMR24s in qualifying. While Lance Stroll was hampered by an ERS problem in Free Practice 3, which forced him to do only one fast lap in Q1 after the unit was changed by his mechanics, Fernando Alonso's position is much more representative of the current pace of the Silverstone team, the only one to have lost both of its drivers during the first phase of qualifying this weekend.

"It was difficult, but I'm not surprised", he explained to F1TV. “We have been struggling for four or five months now, in terms of the performance of the car. Sometimes we manage to get out of Q1, sometimes we don’t, and this was one of those days. It’s going to be a tough race, we’re starting 17th^e and 20^e. We would like to improve but I think it is unlikely. There are only three races left, the car will be the same and our goal is to improve next year. We have to accept that the last three races will be quite painful.

Painful indeed, but not without lessons. The double world champion sees in these difficult events to come in Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, as many chances to try strategic moves. If Alpine was able to benefit from this in Brazil with a double podium, it is not impossible that Aston Martin will manage to pull through, but the green single-seaters will need a lot of external twists of fate to claim even a few points.

“There’s not much to learn, but there’s always something. Starting from a distance, you can take bets on certain decisions, the strategy, the choice of tyres, all these kinds of possibilities. You can try things that you wouldn’t do with a classic strategy. To get the points, we would need luck, because the cars in front of us are faster. We remain positive, but as I said I think the next three races will be painful.”

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