‘The potential is huge’ – Alonso buoyed by Q1 performance in Australia

Fernando Alonso was energised by the step forward made by Aston Martin during Qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix as he came close to progressing to Q2, suggesting early signs of improvement.

The squad, joining forces with engine partner Honda for the first time, have not shied away from the troubles they’ve faced in the season so far – their pre-season tests were marred by limited running, as were the practice sessions at Albert Park.

Alonso was ruled out of FP1 due to a suspected power unit issue and tried to recover the lost time through FP2 and FP3, but the team’s mileage was nevertheless lower than that of their rivals.

The situation seemed much more positive for the Spaniard in Qualifying as he provisionally held a spot in Q2 when the chequered flag fell, thanks to his 1m 21.969s lap. Although Alpine’s Franco Colapinto demoted him to P17, the session left him optimistic for Aston Martin’s season.

“Probably yesterday we could all bet that we were not able to go through Q1 and we nearly made it,” Alonso said afterwards. “I think it’s definitely progress since yesterday – we didn’t touch the car much to be honest, so that tells me that the potential is huge.

“Without changing anything on the car from FP2 to FP3 and to Qualifying, we were 4.5s behind the leaders and now it’s 2.5s or something like that. We gained 2s just by running and being on track when everyone else is running.

“I think reliability is hurting the potential of the car a lot – if you cannot run continuously and make your set-up work… We had a normal FP2 and FP3 and we made huge steps. We just need to keep on going and stay together through this phase.”

His team mate Lance Stroll wasn’t as fortunate, suffering a suspected Internal Combustion Engine issue in FP3 with the team unable to rebuild the car in time for Qualifying, but Alonso believes that their performance will improve as long as they increase their running.

Asked whether the objective for the race is to complete as many laps as possible, he responded: “Absolutely. I think the more laps we do, the more things we learn. At the same time, we need to be realistic.

“We are short on parts as you all know, and we race next week so we need to have the cars ready to go in China as well with no spare parts. Tomorrow we need to monitor the situation and at the first sign of something going wrong, we cannot keep running because we need to keep the cars alive for China.”