You won’t believe what Alonso just did with Aston Martin – The Paddock Insider reveals it all!

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Fast forward four and a half years and Alonso can hardly believe what is happening to him. After a first F1 race plagued by near misses, bad luck and some poor judgment in terms of team moves, the 41-year-old double world champion finds himself in a position to achieve what seemed impossible, a comeback. to the highest step. from the podium.

It is a remarkable turn of events. When he left Alpine, the team that offered him a lifeline by giving him a grid seat in 2021 but had been hesitant to offer him a new contract for 2023 and beyond, few thought of a move to Aston Martin, which ended in a disappointing seventh. out of 10 teams last year, it was more than just one last hurray and a chance to fight for points, and maybe some podium finishes, to close out his career.

But it has turned out to be just as inspired a move, if not more so, than former teammate Lewis Hamilton’s move from McLaren to Mercedes, a partnership that brought the Briton six titles in seven years.

Aston Martin is the second best team on the grid this year. Hand in hand with Alonso, the AMR23 has been on the podium in five of the six races held so far (he was fourth in the other).

When behind the wheel, Alonso feels a confidence in the car that he hasn’t felt in more than a decade. When he turns, the front end does what he wants it to do. When he comes out of the corner, the rear end is majestically docile. When the wind picks up, the car remains stable, instead of being restless. Through the low speed, the large amount of downforce sticks it to the corner to generate speed and good traction. In the fast stuff, the car goes on rails.

Alonso has been dreaming of having a machine like this for years. There is a perception that if you have the best car in F1, you will win. Some try to take credit away from the likes of Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, since his triumphs have come on a machine far superior to the rest. But it is one thing to have a good car and quite another to get the most out of it, and to do it constantly. Alonso is doing just that.

Although they are built to the same standards, each car is very different. It takes time to adjust to a new machine, time to understand how a new set of engineers and mechanics works, how a new team of people make decisions both on and off the track. We saw Carlos Sainz take time to gel at Ferrari. It took Alonso time to shake off the rust after a two-year absence when he returned with Alpine. Ricciardo never made it work at McLaren despite excelling when he was at Red Bull.

That makes what Alonso is doing, against drivers half his age, all the more impressive. He had a tough race in the car last year, one that sources say he said wasn’t as bad as he had thought it would be, at the end of the season’s Abu Dhabi test and then just 270 laps of testing in Bahrain before start this campaign.

He opened his tally with three consecutive podium finishes and has a tally of 93 points, which is just 12 points behind Sergio Pérez’s Red Bull, described by some as one of the best cars in F1, and 66 ahead of teammate Lance. . Stroll, a driver Alonso said earlier this year has the chops to become a future world champion.

He heads into this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix, his home race, as a clear podium contender and brimming with confidence. Alonso was just 0.084s off pole position in Monaco, the closest he has come to pole position during the hybrid era that began in 2014. The Spaniard has the best qualifying average of all this year so far at 3.5 and he has already scored more points in the first six races than in any full season since he left Ferrari at the end of 2014.

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He has competed in a staggering 160 races since his last victory – the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona in 2013. And while he will know that finishing that race at this track, where Red Bull is a heavy favorite as the design de la The Spanish headquarters will play with the strengths of the RB19; it is unlikely that you know that you can put yourself in a place to take advantage of any opportunity that comes your way.

However, Alonso is already looking at the longer game. If he is not in Spain, he knows that there will be chances to win races this year. Red Bull is unlikely to be bulletproof in every race and if Aston Martin can continue to be second best and slowly close the gap, Alonso will be in the best position to take the lead.

Billionaire Lawrence Stroll’s team hasn’t made many improvements yet, instead focusing on getting the most out of their base car. But that doesn’t mean some don’t come. They had the fourth most CFD or wind tunnel races by virtue of finishing seventh in 2023, which means a lot of big updates will be covered at some point.