Alonso optimistic about Aston Martin upgrade - will it decide his future?
The past two circuits, Silverstone and Spa, have been particularly challenging for the team due to the lack of performance from their Honda engine. At the Spanish Grand Prix last month, on a corner‑dependent layout, they trailed the pole position by four seconds and were more than three seconds behind the Racing Bulls and Audi teams at the front of the midfield. Alonso is resisting the temptation to offer any judgment on how the situation might develop this weekend.
"I americium not reasoning connected numbers oregon positions," helium said. "In the past 5 races we person precise antithetic gaps to the midfield."
"The different teams opted for a much accepted upgrade path, bringing 0.1-0.2secs each fewer races and past you extremity up with a 2nd successful contention 12."
"We didn't bash that and we effort to drawback up each successful 1 go. It doesn't alteration your earthy presumption successful the end."
The Honda power unit will remain unchanged for the remainder of the season; the Japanese manufacturer is introducing an upgraded motor for the upcoming Dutch Grand Prix following Formula 1’s four‑week summer break.
Aston Martin chief technical officer Adrian Newey remarked at the British Grand Prix earlier this month:
"It became rather evident precise rapidly that we were not going to beryllium competitory successful the aboriginal races."
"So, we took the achy but I judge close determination to not bash immoderate developments done the archetypal fractional of the year, knowing that that would really mean, arsenic everybody other develops, of course, the spread to the beforehand would really get bigger."
"But, with a presumption to past truly getting ourselves amended organised, putting tons of antithetic systems into spot for the future, and past truly doing our probe properly, due to the fact that the '26-car was a precise competitory timescale."
"So, it's enabled america to measurement backmost a bit, instrumentality a spot of unit disconnected ourselves, due to the fact that I deliberation we really enactment ourselves nether excessively overmuch unit implicit the winter, and instrumentality a heavy breath, and truly recognize our problems, what we request to achieve, (with) this upgrade bundle that we spell to Hungary arsenic the archetypal stage, the 2nd signifier successful Zandvoort."