Fernando Alonso put in another great performance in qualifying, grabbing P5 ahead of the likes of Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri, confirming the new upgrades do work.
The Spaniard seemed confident with his AMR24 in all the runs on Saturday during qualifying, showing how the updated Aston Martin package is giving the hoped results. Actually, he feels the result is “unexpected.”
“Yesterday I had the old package, today the new package. Tonight we will have all the data to confirm that, and to quantify the improvement, but everything felt good in qualifying,” Alonso said. “Little bit unexpected, to be that competitive, to be honest.
“Just a couple of hundreds from [Sainz] Ferrari, Leclerc [is] behind us, Piastri behind us and Mercedes. So we were here six months ago – 1.5 seconds from pole position. And now we are four-tenths.”
However, Aston Martin struggled more on Sunday rather than Saturday so far. Alonso fears that could be the case for the Japanese GP, too. However, his long-run simulation in FP3 with the hard compound seemed really competitive.
“Looking back at the first three races, we are very strong in Saturday, [but] not so strong on Sunday, we are maybe out of position to be in top five.
“If I get overtaken by Oscar and the two Mercedes or something like that, I think or I will guess this is normal – and we will fall back to our position.
“Let’s see what we can do. I’m very open to whatever the race brings to us. I’m extremely proud and happy of today’s job and tomorrow is another day.”