Alonso hails Aston pace as 'another step in the right direction'

Fernando Alonso says Aston Martin's focus isn't on lap times but the Spaniard nevertheless hailed his performance on Friday in Bahrain as "another step in the right direction".

Alonso clocked in second in FP1 just behind Sergio Perez before setting the pace in FP2's cooler, early evening conditions, edging both Red Bull contenders.

The two-time world champion's performance gave another boost to the hype surrounding Aston Martin, but Alonso vowed to remain cautious, insisting it was still early days for Team Silverstone which is undergoing a transformation.

"It's another step into the right direction, the car still feels good. We need to wait and see," Alonso told Sky F1.

"At the moment there is not much focus on times because we have to improve few things on the car, in terms of setup.

"It's very early days and we're still, even on the meetings and on the approach to racing, we're still changing a lot of things and trying to reinforce the team in every area, not only on the car performance.

"It's going to be a very interesting process. But I think the team is learning everything."

• Read also: Alonso quicker than Verstappen and Perez in Bahrain FP2

While keeping his racing boots firmly on the ground, Alonso highlighted Aston's progress and said the team must be proud of its progress and what it has achieved in the past few months.

It feels good to drive, I would lie if I would say it is not feeling good," he said.

"But everything is relative to what the other teams are doing and you can feel very good on one car and maybe there are three or four cars faster than you and it doesn’t feel that good anymore. So let’s see where we are.

"We have to be proud of the step that we have done. It has been a very intense two or three months’ work in the factory, we spent endless hours in the simulator and meetings trying to anticipate what problems we could face in the first couple of races.

"As I said, the knowledge that this team has, the talent that this team has is probably unprecedented – the group of people we have. So that is something that is very encouraging for the future."

Aston Martin's build-up follows the vision of its ambitious owner, Lawrence Stroll who has invested heavily in the future of his team with the aim of carrying it to the front of the grid.

And Alonso says it's only a matter of time before Aston begins to challenge F1's current front-runners.

"Let's see what happens in the in the first couple of races, at the moment its only good test sessions," he added.

"I think Lawrence has this vision on everything he does and it's very difficult to see him fail on anything that he has into his vision.

"I think it's a matter of time before Aston Martin could challenge top teams. But still a long way to go."

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