Alonso identifies possible cause of Aston Martin's summer struggles

Fernando Alonso believes Aston Martin's mid-season slump in performance was caused by chasing its car set-up "too often."

Although the team achieved a podium at the Dutch Grand Prix with Alonso finishing second, it was the first time silverware was collected since the Canadian GP in June - where the Spaniard also finished second.

The early season momentum of the team had stalled, with rivals Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren eating into its advantage, bringing an end to the run of six podiums in the first seven races.

Throughout the four races in July, the team's best result was fifth from Alonso in the final race in Belgium, with teammate Lance Stroll managing ninth in Austria and Belgium - although he was fourth in the Austria Sprint.

Aston Martin Performance Director Tom McCullough has given his confidence in the team's current development path, but Alonso believes that it has complicated other aspects of race weekends.

Alonso: Couple of different thoughts about July

"You start the weekend and you feel the car is not responding to your inputs, you are not comfortable on the way into the corners or you know you feel something that is not connected in the car," Alonso told media, including RacingNews365.

"Then you start changing few things on the setup and you're just improving one axle making worse the other axle, so you're dealing with a fine line that you're never happy with.

"It happened too often in July. It could be down to the car performance, to the package that we were running at that time.

"There were a couple of different thoughts about our difficulties in that month, but there is no clear explanation."