Fernando Alonso says his P5 qualifying performance at Suzuka with Aston Martin’s upgraded car was “a bit unexpected”, but the Spaniard is cautious about maintaining that position in Sunday’s race.
Aston introduced in Japan a series of updates on its AMR24 that include changes to the car’s floor body, diffuser, engine cover and beam wing, all of which are part of the outfit’s latest aero package designed to boost overall downforce and speed.
In order to conduct a direct performance comparison, only Lance Stroll’s car benefitted from the evolution on Friday, which decided the team to fit Alonso’s machine with the new elements overnight and optimize both cars’ set-up.
"Yesterday I had the old package, today the new package,” explained Alonso whose best flyer in Q3 was 0.489s adrift from Max Verstappen’s pole position.
“Tonight we will have all the data to confirm that, and to quantify the improvement, but everything felt good in qualifying.
“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."
Despite his encouraging level of performance in qualifying, Alonso reckons he’ll be challenged to hold his own at the start on Sunday, with Piastri, Hamilton, Leclerc and Russell all likely snapping at his heals from the outset.
"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," he said.
"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."
While Red Bull remains in a league of its own this season, Alonso noted how the spread across the remainder of the field has significantly tightened.
"In qualifying it's true that this year that everything is so close," he said. "We saw Nico [Hulkenberg], Valtteri [Bottas] today, they are three tenths away or something like that, which is incredible.
"Then in the race, you see the real face of the cars. This is something that we are struggling with a little bit as well, we are very competitive on Saturday, and not so much on Sunday. So our true pace, I think, is Sunday's pace.
"On Saturday, because of the grip of tyres, because of everything, maybe you mask some of the problems."
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