Fernando Alonso enjoyed his best season in a decade in 2023, taking eight podiums on his way to fourth in the championship in a remarkably successful start to his time at Aston Martin.
But as the year progressed, Aston Martin slowly slipped further and further back from their rivals at the front of the field as Ferrari, Mercedes and even McLaren found more pace.
Sadly for Alonso and his team, they did not seem to find any momentum over the winter. While Aston Martin remain the fifth-placed team in the championship, they are now a distant fifth – Alonso and team mate Lance Stroll now further adrift of their rivals ahead than they were at the end of last season.
Alonso has made his career out of putting in exceptional drives in underwhelming cars. Despite the difficulties Aston Martin have had so far this season, he has certainly put in some outstanding performances at points in the first 14 rounds of the championship.
The first came as early as the second round in Saudi Arabia, which was typical of the kinds of weekends he had throughout last year. He qualified on the second row of the grid in fourth, then put in perhaps the best performance of anyone not named Max Verstappen on Sunday to finish in fifth, ahead of both Mercedes, Oliver Bearman’s Ferrari and Lando Norris’s McLaren.
Alonso was also on form in Japan, where he qualified the car in the top five again and beat George Russell, Oscar Piastri and Lewis Hamilton home to the chequered flag by a matter of seconds. Third place on the grid for both the sprint race and the grand prix in China was further evidence of his skills, before he secured another top six finish in Montreal after holding off Hamilton in a faster Mercedes for over 20 laps.
However, that’s not to say Alonso maximised the performance of his car – or even himself – every weekend over the first half of the season. Atypically for the double world champion, there were almost as many instances where he seemed to be lacking in speed compared to team mate Stroll as there were where Alonso was clearly ahead.
Fernando Alonso
Best
Worst
GP start: 4
GP finish: 5
Points: 49
The first instance was in Melbourne, where a rare mistake in qualifying left him behind Stroll on the grid before he was demoted to eighth after a controversial post-race penalty for what the stewards determined was “potentially dangerous” driving in his creative defence from Russell in the final laps. He caused heavy damage to his car in Imola by spinning off at the second Rivazza in final practice, then was knocked out 19th in qualifying. The most experienced driver in F1 history was then guilty of one of the clumsiest mistakes of the season when he ran into Zhou Guanyu at turn three in Austria to ruin his grand prix with a deserved ten second penalty.
Suddenly, Stroll was much closer to Alonso than he had been before in their year-and-a-half together as team mates. Stroll finished ahead of him at Silverstone, then cheekily pinched the final point off his team mate at the Hungaroring by refusing a direct order to return a position to Alonso at the end of the race. At least Alonso went into the summer break on a high, finishing as the ‘best of the rest’ in ninth, which turned into four points in eighth following Russell’s disqualification.
Although Alonso clearly continues to have the same high upside as ever, it’s only more conspicuous when he doesn’t quite reach the same lofty levels of performance that he so often has. As Aston Martin try to build themselves back to the front, they could do with more of Alonso at his best over the final rounds of the season.
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