Alonso lays down marker for Aston Martin resurgence

Fernando Alonso believes Aston Martin will be a stronger force at the start of the 2025 F1 season because of its difficult finish to the previous campaign.

The two-time F1 drivers' champion has said the Silverstone-based squad will apply the learnings of why the team has struggled of late to its next car.

Aston Martin has endured an inconsistent period under the current regulations cycle. Having started slowly in 2022, it improved over the course of the year before a significant step over the winter put Fernando Alonso into perennial podium contention in his first half a season with the team.

However, having taken six trips to the rostrum from the first eight rounds in 2023, performance again fell away.

The team appeared to find stable ground as a consistent top-five team in the constructors' standings, but its form again started to slip towards the end of 2024.

Aston Martin's struggles embody the difficulties teams have had improving their cars during the contemporary ground-effect era, where the delicate relationship between balance and aerodynamic performance means that oftentimes upgrades result in a relative step backwards.

Therefore, whilst mired in inconsistent performance, Alonso aimed to use the second half of 2024 to lay foundations and springboard into the season to come.

"It goes up and down for everybody," the 43-year-old told media including RacingNews365. "Difficult to be sure of that, but I think we didn’t manage to improve the car much throughout the season.

"So we started quite strong, but we are now in a position that we're struggling to be in Q3 on some occasions."

Alonso was only able to score points in five of the final 10 rounds, whilst team-mate Lance Stroll failed claim any in the final 11 events of the year, dating back to before the summer break.

However, the Spanish driver was keen to underline how Aston Martin's poor end to the previous campaign may ultimately stand the team in good stead moving forwards.

"But, at the same time, all those difficulties probably are teaching us a lot of lessons, which we will apply into next year's car," he mused.

"And that will be probably the biggest positive aspect of the second part of the year, that even if we didn't succeed in putting much performance on the car, I think it's well understood what we are struggling with at the moment. So that will be applying in 2025."