2024 Aston Martin | Aramco F1 Team

[Emag]

Certainly looked a lot better than Bahrain, but on heavier fuel, they were struggling compared to the cars they beat in qualifying.

Also, the track here is very low deg, so it might have flattered them a bit. Let's see how they fare in Australia, but either way, Fernando is doing a phenomenal job. It's crazy to think that with 2 Strolls in the team, they might have even been out of points today.

I know he is the son of the owner, but if they are serious about pushing this team towards to the front, then all anchors must be cut off. They potentially lost P4 because of the second driver last year. And already this year the second driver has exaggerated the gap to P4.

I hope Lawrence has a limit with underperformance, even with his own son.

[KimiRai]

Alonso beat Russell on pure skill alone, any other driver (bar Max perhaps) would have finished behind because Russell would have gotten into DRS. P5 is just a magic result, realistic result would have been P6 or P7

[NAPI10]

Certainly looked a lot better than Bahrain, but on heavier fuel, they were struggling compared to the cars they beat in qualifying.

Also, the track here is very low deg, so it might have flattered them a bit. Let's see how they fare in Australia, but either way, Fernando is doing a phenomenal job. It's crazy to think that with 2 Strolls in the team, they might have even been out of points today.

I know he is the son of the owner, but if they are serious about pushing this team towards to the front, then all anchors must be cut off. They potentially lost P4 because of the second driver last year. And already this year the second driver has exaggerated the gap to P4.

I hope Lawrence has a limit with underperformance, even with his own son.

How abt 2 Spaniard in Green next year

[abhi1200]

Aston were 5th fastest but closer to teams ahead in race pace compared to Bahrain

[Bisonas]

It was a brilliant drive from Alonso.
Kudos to him, because AMR is still struggling with race pace and he has to deliver in all areas in order to archive 5th or better.
Race pace was better than Bahrain. but not there yet. They still have work to do.
I believe (and still hope), that they are on top of it, and that they will figure out what to do next.
ALO stellar qualifying and starting position + the early safety car and pitstop to get out of the mediums + the difficulty to drive close to and pass any car that has decent straight line speed, masked AMR struggles a bit, but IMO there are struggles with balance, tire deg and race pace. We have to acknowledge that.
Those struggles are the bad thing..
The good things are
1st.. They are not threatened from behind (yet), meaning they have a gap to the middle field so they can still get constant points even in worst case scenarios,
2nd IMO they are very close with MER and MCL, little farther from FER, but among that group of cars and drivers (minus stroll) IMO they can mix it together on different tracks depending on the characteristics of each track.
If (and its a big if) AMR makes a breakthrough with balance and race pace, it is possible to even fight FER in in the near future on some tracks. They are not miles away.
RBR on the other hand is miles away..
I think this year we are gonna see the most 1-2 finishes in history of F1. It's up to Perez actually for this to happen.
If he doesn't mess up the second part of the year as he usually does. first few races where always ok for Perez. L8r on he is starting to mess everything up usually.

[Sedaxel]

Fernando Alonso: "The car heats up the tires very well... and eats them up. Good for one lap, bad in the race."

ALO said that BEFORE the race. He also said there were some setup tunings for improving race pace and that they didn't know how would they work until seeing them in the race.

Now the race is over, so your post is dated. Once the race is over, it's time to analyze how the pace improved with those setup adjustments.

[KimiRai]

One lap performance improved 8 tenths compared to 2023 but race pace only improved 2.5 tenths. Race pace is still atrocious, slightly better than Bahrain but we cant expect it to improve substantially until fixes/upgrades arrive (and they have to work!)

[wiktor977]

Someone explain to me why Alonso would consider Merc?

It all depends on how Aston can improve the car during the first part of the season, if there is no change until summer break Alonso will leave. Good car development is crucial for Aston in 2024.

He will not leave in Mercedes, you think they just "sent" away Hamilton because of 1 year contract, then Alonso will get 3 year contract ? Alonso only place to go is Redbull, at this point there are no better options...

Who knows what will happen? I said what in my opinion needs to happen for Alonso to stay in Aston, if not he will leave. If it's Red Bull or Mercedes, we don't know.

[OnEcRiTiCaL]

The answer for bad race pace is simple, weight. Is not that the car is eat the tyres in every situation. With bad tyre handle Alonso couldn't go 50 round on hards. After 20 lap on the hards the tyres started to working ,but still wasn't perfect. Only question is,what doing the weight with the tyres or suspension or with the floor.

[Xyz22]

One lap performance improved 8 tenths compared to 2023 but race pace only improved 2.5 tenths. Race pace is still atrocious, slightly better than Bahrain but we cant expect it to improve substantially until fixes/upgrades arrive (and they have to work!)

And there is very very low deg in this track.

[alonsofan]

Someone explain to me why Alonso would consider Merc?

The season has just started. Hold your breath and see what happened in 2023.

[Kamel]

Shocked by the tire deg and quality of Piastri’s car. He spent half the race in Hamilton’s dirty stream, and it seemed to me that Alonso could eat OP by the end of the race

[KimiRai]

Shocked by the tire deg and quality of Piastri’s car. He spent half the race in Hamilton’s dirty stream, and it seemed to me that Alonso could eat OP by the end of the race

Yep, if ALO had been in the same place his tyres would have died.

[KimiRai]

You can't see it so easily because the car is worse and therefore results are as well, but Alonso so far in terms of weekend execution, qualifying and the race, is doing a better job than even last year. That's no mean feat for someone who is 42 years old... hopefully I haven't jinxed him for Australia with this , but it's incredible the level he continues to be at. Amazing.

[Xyz22]

You can't see it so easily because the car is worse and therefore results are as well, but Alonso so far in terms of weekend execution, qualifying and the race, is doing a better job than even last year. That's no mean feat for someone who is 42 years old... hopefully I haven't jinxed him for Australia with this , but it's incredible the level he continues to be at. Amazing.

Only driver (Leclerc) was mocked despite it was known that the car was terrible in race trim. Alonso did a very good race in fact.

In any event, the car will be way more exposed in other tracks in they can't fix the issues. Jeddah is a very peculiar track where deg is extremely low and staying close to the car ahead is not easy due to the tricky sector one, in which dirty air makes the car slide quite a bit.