Fernando Alonso has cautioned that there “are not many miracles” in Formula 1 – but he believes that his Aston Martin team can enjoy a reset ahead of the upcoming season and benefit from lessons learned.
The Silverstone outfit endured a difficult 2024 but still finished finish a distant fifth in the World Championship, with most of its points scored in the early part of the year.
The team endured a four-race run between Austin and Las Vegas with no points logged at all before Alonso secured seventh and ninth places in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
He was eventually classified ninth in the World Championship, behind the drivers from the top four teams.
“The last two races, finishing in the points, for sure it’s a good thing to finish on a positive note after, I think Austin, Mexico, Brazil, pointless,” he said when asked by this writer about the end of his season.
“And now I think we can reset. We can learn from all the difficulties and the mistakes of this year, and apply those learnings into next year’s project.
“The next few months are obviously very interesting, with Enrico Cardile joining the team. Adrian Newey in March or April or whatever.
“And yeah, 2026, new rules, Honda coming to the team. So exciting times. Happy to be in the team in this transition and this exciting project. And I’m enjoying all the process of it.”
Alonso insists that he has reason to be optimistic about the future as the pieces start to fall into place.
“I think the new factory now is completed,” he said. “Also the new wind tunnel is going to be open soon. Andy Cowell I think did change already some of the weaknesses that he found in the team.
“So we have trust on the new management. I think things are moving in the right direction. So happy for that.
“But in F1, there are not many miracles. You need to be passionate, you need to find that sweet spot in the car, you need to find that upgrade that really awakes everything in these ground effect cars, as McLaren proved last year, they started last and then won races in the in the mid-season.
“And we need to learn from them. This is a good example of how things can be can be done. And we will try to reset this winter, and come back stronger.”
Expanding on the inspiration to be drawn from McLaren’s progress he added: “The biggest change was last year.
“They didn’t do much in 2019, they didn’t do much in 2020, they didn’t do much in 2021, they didn’t do much in 2022, they didn’t do much in 2023 – until Austria, when they were on the podium.
“And in Austria, they introduced a package that they gained six/seventh tenths or whatever, and that was the beginning of a series of packages that put the car as the fastest eventually, so that Austria package, if we want to call it, this is something that we need to work on.”
Adam Cooper F1 