Our review of how all ten F1 teams fared in 2023 moves into the top five with a look at Aston Martin and drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll.
Strong start, disappointing finish
The team picture
- Constructors standing: P5, 280 points
This year has been quite the wild ride for Aston Martin. The team finished in seventh place last year with an anaemic 55 points, and there had been surprise when Fernando Alonso opted to leave the apparently superior Alpine set-up for what appeared to be very much a demotion. Yet right from the start the Aston looked shockingly good. Even though Lance Stroll missed pre-season testing with wrist injuries sustained in a training accident, they were the story of Bahrain with Alonso going on to take a fabulous podium in the maiden race alongside the all-conquering Red Bull drivers.
A one-off, flash-in-the-pan result, everyone said. But the podiums kept coming for Alonso and by the British GP he was in a strong third place in the driver standings, very much still within touching distance of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. Unfortunately Stroll wasn't able to match his team mate's performance, and that weakness had already cost Aston Martin second place in the constructors standings after Spain. The team made a wrong turn on development over the summer and dropped further away: while Alonso was on the podium again in Brazil, by now the shine of Aston's early season had largely lost its lustre.
The driver line-up
- Fernando Alonso: P4, 206 points
- Lance Stroll: P10, 74 points
Williams might have by far the biggest mismatch between its drivers, but there's also a big disparity between Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll at Aston Martin. Alonso picked up six podium finishes in the first eight races and added two more at Zandvoort and Interlagos later in the season despite a fall-off in the performance of the AMR23. In contrast, Stroll's best result was fourth in Australia and two back-to-back P5 finishes in Brazil and Las Vegas.
In total, Alonso beat Stroll in qualifying 19 times out of 22, and finished ahead of Stroll 17 times in races (not including Singapore where Stroll withdrew before the start after suffering a heavy crash in qualifying.) The Canadian failed to score in ten races while Alonso missed out on just three occasions. However Stroll did look much improved toward the end of the year, following his unfortunate temperamental meltdown in Qatar.
How 2024 is looking for Aston Martin
The team has benefitted greatly from recent investment into its revamped Silverstone headquarters and factory, and the arrival of Fernando Alonso has clearly further galvanised the team. Last year we wrote that it would be exciting to see what Alonso would bring to the team, adding "if it all comes together then it could be the breakthrough the team has been looking for" and we can feel smugly justified by how that played out. But we also added that "the big problem remains the question mark over Stroll" and that still remains very much the case 12 months later.
The team made huge progress at the start of this season by doing a forensic deep dive on last year's championship-winning Red Bull RB18 design, but then seemed to stall when it came to making their own upgrades count from the middle of the campaign. Can they find a way around this impasse over the winter to regain their momentum, or will they remain firmly stuck in the midfield mud in 2024?
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