Alonso warns: 'Performance of the teams might start to change now'

Alonso's podium in Bahrain was the big surprise of the opening race this season. The result was repeated in Saudi Arabia and Australia, which currently puts Aston Martin second in the championship, ahead of Ferrari and Mercedes. On the track too, Alonso has shown he can cope with these teams, although he believes this advantage will diminish over the next few races.

"Because the first three races took place outside Europe, I think it was difficult to make upgrades," analysed Alonso. "But from now on we might see the performance of the teams change a bit, race by race, depending on who brings an improvement that is good enough. It seems that qualifying is quite important now, because the race pace is very similar and I think we are now entering a part of the season that is going to be very interesting."

'Currently these are happy days for us'

"We have to learn and grow as a team, also off the track, because we are racing against Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari, teams that are used to this kind of development pace. And maybe we are just in a learning process. So we are going into this season in a very humble way and we will see how it goes," Alonso continued.

However, the Spaniard does feel that the team should be happy with what has been achieved so far. "For us at the moment it's all happy days. We never expected to be on the podium, maybe not even the whole season, and we have three in three races. So everything that is coming now is a nice bonus."