Street circuits ‘cannot hide lack of performance’ says Alonso as Aston Martin lose ground to rivals

Despite a strong points finish in Singapore, Fernando Alonso was careful to point out that Aston Martin have struggled at the last few circuits and need to find a solution before the next round.

The Spaniard continued his momentum from Baku where he finished the race in sixth, touching down in Singapore to qualify seventh at a circuit where track position is extremely important.

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Passed by the out-of-position Ferraris, Alonso lost one place to cross the line in eighth to add another four points to the British team’s tally, keeping them as the best of the rest in the standings.

He also managed to get the better of Haas’s Nico Hulkenberg as Aston Martin made some smart strategy calls to pull off an undercut rather than forcing Alonso to overtake him on track.

“Eighth is better than we expected coming here to Singapore,” the former world champion said. “Obviously the qualifying yesterday was very encouraging and starting P7, we were dreaming that P8/P9 was possible and at the end we achieved it.

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“Good strategy from the team – we were behind Nico, we undercut on Lap 23 and we managed to overtake him, so overall I think eighth was the maximum. Now we have a little break before Austin and we have to find some performance in the car.

“We’ve been losing a little bit of ground compared to the top teams and we are in the middle of the midfield. We want to change this situation.”

Although Aston Martin have picked up points here and there – mainly thanks to Alonso – other midfield teams like Haas have had a more positive trajectory since the summer break, leaving the 43-year-old concerned for the rest of the season.

As teams begin to switch their focus to 2025, Alonso insisted that “it’s a must” that they continue development over the remaining six races to prevent others from catching up to them in the standings, where they are fifth with 86 points.

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“The last two circuits which were street circuits, we did good qualifyings and then in the race it’s difficult to overtake so we consolidate those positions in the race,” he explained. “But this cannot hide the lack of performance we are seeing now in the last few events.

“We are aware of that, the team is working flat-out. When the car is performing we are here to score points. When we are struggling like now, we still score points because the team is delivering the job but aware of the situation at the same time.”