Fernando Alonso says Aston Martin "need time" to fully exploit their 2023 car despite an impressive test in Bahrain.
Even before its launch earlier this month, rumours had been circulating of the Silverstone-based outfit making big performance gains with the AMR23, designed by former Red Bull aero chief Dan Fallows.
And that appeared to be confirmed in pre-season testing as Alonso ran strongly across the three days, with some predicting Aston Martin could make the top three into a top four this year.
The double world champion though was coy, telling the media: “I think we are still discovering things on the car.
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“Last year Aston Martin struggled with the car and changed the philosophy completely, 95% of the car this year is new, and so I think we are just experimenting a bit with different set-ups and different things the last few days.
“Hopefully we’ll put it all together, but we’ll need time, we’ll need a few races to really exploit the full potential of the car because there is no time now with only three days to really go through all the test items we want.”
Alonso completed most of the running for Aston Martin as teammate Lance Stroll missed the test through injuries picked up while cycling.
An update on our driver line-up for the #BahrainGP.
— Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team (@AstonMartinF1) February 26, 2023
The team will continue to give Lance every chance to race, pending recovery from his injury. Should he not be fit to compete, then Felipe will drive the AMR23 alongside Fernando. pic.twitter.com/G0gtPt0tAh
And Fernando explained why the absence of the Canadian is actually more significant than it appears.
"It hurts a lot," he told F1TV. "I think we miss him because some of my comments and feelings with the car, we never know if it’s just me in a new team and a new car.
"Was [it] just maybe an Aston Martin thing that Lance could spot? Brake pedal feeling, power steering… I don’t know if these are a legacy thing with the team or new in this car.
"So we cannot do it without him. So I hope he can come [back] very soon."
Send it, @alo_oficial! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/zrrRbgtPFh
— Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team (@AstonMartinF1) February 25, 2023
Even so, after the drastic design overhaul over the past year, Alonso hopes this year's Aston Martin can become a foundation from which future cars are made.
“That was the aim,” he said. “Last year’s platform was not good enough.
“I think with this new one we have a car that we can develop throughout the season and we can use not only 5% of this car next year, we can use more and that helps the team for some continuity.”
