Alonso says Bob Bell will 'elevate Aston to new level'

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Fernando Alonso has hailed the appointment of Bob Bell to the newly created role of technical executive director at Aston Martin will help the team to raise its game and deliver on its potential.

Bell was previously a long-time veteran at Enstone where he worked with Alonso as Renault technical director during the Spaniard's title-winning campaigns in 2005 and 2006, and also spent a three-year spell at Mercedes.

Bell was the latest in an exodus of senior team management to leave Alpine in the last few months, and it was no time at all before Aston swooped in to snap up his services.

“It’s always good news when more people join the team," Alonso commented last week. "More experiences from previous years, and from other teams. It will bring [a boost] to our already very sophisticated technical department."

"Those kinds of senior role people bring always background knowledge about how to run a competitive team and how to have a good structure in the factory," Alonso added.

Read also: Aston appoints Bob Bell as technical executive director

"The contribution of Bob hopefully brings Aston into a better level,' he said. "That’s the aim, so I’m happy to welcome him.”

It's a busy time for Aston, which last year produced a sudden surge in early-season form that saw Alonso pull off a string of podiums as the next-best driver behind Red Bull's dominant Max Verstappen.

While the team fell back in the second half of the season, Alonso ius hoping that they will be able to recover their momentum this season as the team invests heavily in new staff hires and infrastructure at its new Silverstone base.

"When more people come to the team there is not really any disadvantage," was Alonso's view of the influx of new staff and talent such as Bell. "To be honest, there is always an advantage,”

"The problem is to convince everyone to work together as a team and as a group," he added, pointing to the responsibility for making everything gel together which lay with Aston group CEO Martin Whitmarsh and team owner Lawrence Stroll.

"That’s the role of Martin, also the role of Lawrence as a leader. I think we have a great technical group of people and great leadership as well, so step-by-step hopefully [we are] creating a bigger team.”

Alonso finished the first race of the season in Bahrain in ninth place and was fifth in Saudi Arabia while his team mate Lance Stroll crashed out early.

That puts Alonso P7 in the drivers championship on 12 points, two races into the record 24-event season, while Aston itself is fifth in the constructors championship behind Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.