Watching Fernando Alonso almost bouncing on the spot, an irrepressible grin plastered over his face, was an enormously endearing moment with which to open the 2023 Formula One season. He and his Aston Martin team had pulled off a brilliant coup at the season opener in Bahrain; Alonso was on the podium and Aston had taken the most improbable seat at F1’s top table.
Having finished seventh in 2022, impotent at the back of the field, Aston Martin’s form at the Sakhir circuit was revelatory. Alonso was third behind the two dominant Red Bulls, but he had comfortably beaten both Mercedes and Ferrari. Nor was it a flash in the pan. Where Ferrari and Mercedes had stuttered to a start, Aston had hit the ground running. Alonso went on to take six podiums from the opening eight races.
It was almost an F1 fairytale but one destined to be denied a happy ending. As the season progressed they were caught and passed by Mercedes and Ferrari and then, with a late season surge, by McLaren too. They could not match the two big teams’ rate of development, they faced infrastructure challenges as well as unexpected technical complications, and finished in fifth place.
It might be considered a dispiriting end to what had opened with such verve but Alonso and the team believe it was an encouraging stepping stone for 2024, which begins in Bahrain on 2 March, the first race of a mammoth 24-meeting season. Optimism is high at Aston Martin and the goal remains a breakthrough into competing at the very front.
Alonso acclaimed 2023 as a success despite the lacklustre finish but was under no illusions that there is hard work to be done. “I see only positives,” he said of last season. “It was unthinkable 12 months ago, at this stage, to think about the campaign we did.
“Now comes the tricky period for Aston Martin, the next two or three years, to find that extra bit, to create something that no one has in that moment, to be creative, to be innovative.”
His opinion was echoed by the team principal, Mike Krack. “We think about what is needed next, to make the next step,” he said. “The initial steps are always easy but they get more and more difficult.” Krack is a calm, considered operator. He is not given to hyperbole but exudes a quiet confidence for the team’s future. The team may have, to an extent, flattered to deceive last season but their ambition is genuine as is their increasing ability to meet it, backed by the billionaire owner, Lawrence Stroll.
“Lawrence is extremely ambitious and extremely passionate about what we do,” Krack said. “The investments he has made you can only do when you are passionate. He has the desire to bring the team to the front and he will do everything that is needed to achieve it.”
It is these investments Aston expect to make a difference in the near future. Stroll has bankrolled a new factory complex at Silverstone and a new wind tunnel facility. The factory opened last year, but will reach full operating potential this season when the wind tunnel will also come online. They already have a deal with Honda, who will become the team’s works engine supplier in 2026.
Stroll has also provided the largesse to sign Alonso and to headhunt the very experienced Dan Fallows as technical director from Red Bull, among an extensive personnel expansion. All of which form part of the team’s ethos expressed by Krack as “people, tools and process”. The first two are well under way, the latter must come with experience and intense competition.
The team’s owner does have a reputation for being ruthless, which may prove detrimental in sport where team harmony is essential, but Krack insists his input is positive. “You need a certain level [of ruthlessness],” he said. “But I have not witnessed a lot of it. You need someone that is challenging what you are doing and not having everybody in a comfort zone all the time because that is not how you drive change and progress.”
Krack also emphasises the team’s ability to make quick decisions and be nimble, unhampered by the bureaucratic weight of a major car manufacturer. It was displayed amply in 2022 when their car proved very poor from the off. Within two races they had accepted its failings and focused on an entirely new model for the following year. The result was their remarkable opening to 2023.
They are learning on the job and will expect only to improve in that department. As last season progressed they found, as the car developed, it was increasingly operating in a narrow window. Experiments with new floor specifications to address it only complicated their efforts further as they slipped backwards. Yet the time was not wasted. As their performance director, Tom McCullough, noted, it gave them a better understanding of the car but also, crucially, data to apply to this year’s model.
Even as fourth place in the championship slipped away, the team were looking to this year, experimenting with new aerodynamic packages to better inform the direction of development of the new car. These are the robust, considered actions of a team very much with a solid plan in place, a strategy rather than reactive floundering. Alonso may have cause to be buoyant once more come testing in February with a team as lean and hungry as the double world champion himself.
