Alonso enjoys current chapter: 'And now I get to work with Newey'
F1 News
Given how Fernando Alonso's Aston Martin journey began in the 2023 season, the British team fell back considerably in 2024. By the end of the year, the 2023 podiums where changed for rarely scoring points. Still, the Spaniard looks ahead optimistically, and underlined he enjoys where he is at this moment.
Entering the first Grand Prix of next season in Melbourne, Australia, it will be 24 years since the Spaniard made his debut at the same track back in 2001. Having spent so many seasons in the competition does not really matter to the driver, he explained to GPblog among others in Abu Dhabi. "It's not a big thing. I'm just enjoying myself, this part of my career. I still feel fast and I feel motivated and I'm enjoying with the team, the progress, the good things, but also the bad things."
He continued: "We try to learn from those. Soon we will start working with great people that I admire, like Adrian Newey. Enrico [Cardile] is joining the team as well soon. Andy Cowell recently. So people that I race against and now I have the possibility to work alongside and learn from them. I think it's a good moment in my life and my career so I'm enjoying every day," he said about the great minds signed by Aston Martin over the 2024 season.
Are the current regulations the least enjoyable for Alonso?
Having competed in F1 in three different decades, Alonso could drive many different cars under different regulations. "I don't know. Obviously these cars, with the ground effect, are a little bit different. I think this year we show as well for everybody that it's difficult to improve the car because the cars became very, very sensitive to changes and very critical in some areas that even the upgrades are not a guarantee anymore that it will make the car faster," he explained.
The Spaniard however pointed out one reason getting the most out of the current car is not easy, making it less fun. "Running so low and close to the ground and some of the kerbs as well are a little bit difficult for the car. We can lose even pieces of the car when we run over the kerbs. So this kind of fragile aspect of the car is a little bit not great in terms of having fun driving or attacking in the laps, in qualifying or the race. But I think it was not different to last year or to 2022 when we introduced this ground effect. So this year it was one more of those," the two-time world champion concluded.
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