Aston Martin: Fernando Alonso targets success with new team
- Published
The AMR23 - Aston Martin's F1 car for the 2023 season - was unveiled at the team's new headquarters at Silverstone
Fernando Alonso says he is convinced the Aston Martin team he has joined this year will become winners in Formula 1 in the future.
Their 2023 car was launched on Monday at a new factory, which is due to be finished in the summer, with hopes of significant improvement this season.
Alonso said he "believed there was a possibility" he could eventually win races and a third title with the team.
"I don't think this year - I am honest on that," said Alonso.
"I cannot say to anyone we will be fighting for victories this year.
"But I want to have a good car to start with and maybe in the second part of the year we can get closer if there is an opportunity, changeable conditions, something that when the opportunity comes we will not miss it.
"We have more possibilities to fight for wins and podiums next year if we have a good baseline this year."
The two-time champion, who is 41 and heading into his 20th F1 season, added: "This project is very ambitious and has a lot of things to prove. I know my time is not unlimited behind the wheel but I will try to make this process as short as possible and help the team as much as I can."
Aston Martin are in the midst of a restructuring process started by owner Lawrence Stroll, the billionaire Canadian businessman who bought the team in 2020 and wants to turn them into world champions.
Since then Stroll has almost doubled the workforce to close to 800 staff, spent millions on the new factory, which includes a new wind tunnel, and has recruited big-name engineers from front-running teams, including new technical director Dan Fallows from Red Bull and his deputy Eric Blandin from Mercedes.
Aston Martin started last season with the second slowest car but improved to just miss out sixth place in the constructors' championship by the end of the year.
Alonso's team-mate Lance Stroll, son of Lawrence, said of this season's targets: "The objective is to be consistently fighting for good points every weekend, occasionally fight for podiums. That's a good goal."
Alonso said: "I am very motivated and happy with the things I am seeing. This team is not happy with fourth, it is not happy with third, it is not happy with second. This is what I feel from everyone here.
"At the same time, they are not giving unrealistic expectations. They know where we are. We know last year only three teams were on the same lap as the leader; Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes - everyone else was one lap behind.
"We know those kind of gaps in F1 are very difficult to overcome in two or three months. But let's see if we can have a good season, enjoy and have a good reliability and make sure the team grows up.
"At the beginning I expect some difficult races until we find where the car operates, which window the set-up, which we have to work with.
"The first five or six races in Alpine I was struggling a lot to feel the front end, different power steering, settings, all these things, this year we have only one day and a half testing in Bahrain.
"So I am aware I will not be 100% in Bahrain or Jeddah; maybe not in Australia. That is a little bit unfair. It is the only sport you do one and half day of practice and then play a world championship."
Alonso left Alpine at the end of last year because he was convinced by the potential of Aston Martin and Spaniard said he "trusts this project" and believed that Stroll would achieve his aims.
"I am very demanding in everything I do," Alonso said. "I expect a lot from people I work with. I give my 100% and I expect the same from the people I work with.
"Since the first day in Aston Martin I felt exactly the same values from the people around me.
"We have the leadership of Lawrence, who had a lot of success in many different projects and I have no doubt F1 will not be any different. He will succeed sooner or later.
"The new people, Dan Fallows and Eric [Blandin], the best people in each of their competitors, Aston Martin went and convinced them to join. So there is something special going on in this team."
Although he will turn 42 in July, Alonso, looking slimmer than last season, said he was "fitter than ever" because his winter had not been disrupted, unlike the last two.
He broke his jaw in a cycling accident before his return to F1 in 2021 after two years away "and could not move for three weeks", and "last winter I had to remove plates and things from my face. So this is the first winter I have been able to do a normal preparation (since his comeback)."
Fallows said the team had tried to be "bold and aggressive" with the new car, which features side pods with a heavy undercut and a re-designed nose and front wing.
"We wanted to make sure this gave its a really good platform to develop from," he said.