Fernando Alonso fires Aston Martin ‘important’ warning for 2024 F1 season

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Fernando Alonso has now issued Aston Martin an ‘important’ warning whilst setting out his key target for the Spaniard’s second season with the Formula 1 team in 2024.

The 42-year-old joined the Silverstone team to replace Sebastian Vettel racing beside Lance Stroll for the 2023 season. It proved to be a great decision for Alonso and Aston Martin with the two-time F1 champion sealing eight podium finishes and fourth in the drivers’ standings.

Alonso even stood on the rostrum six times through the first eight rounds, including second-place results in Monaco and Canada. His early results even eclipsed what the 32-time Grand Prix winner had achieved during his previous seven seasons as a Formula 1 driver combined.

Fernando Alonso had a ‘dream’ debut season with Aston Martin

Such was the success that Alonso achieved during his first season with Aston Martin that he dubbed 2023 as a ‘dream’ campaign. But the Silverstone squad could only secure fifth in the constructors’ standings after losing out to Mercedes and McLaren in the development race.

Aston Martin will now hope to hit the ground running again in 2024 after moving into their new £200m headquarters. The team started to move into their new factory at Silverstone in May after Alonso made the Monaco GP podium following almost two years of construction.

Fernando Alonso sets his targets for the 2024 Formula 1 season

Aston Martin built the first all-new Formula 1 factory for almost 20 years with their 400,000 square feet (37,000m2) facility. Alonso also now states that the factory is one of the reasons why his team cannot afford to take any steps backwards in 2024 and should be eying wins.

“Yeah, it’s going to be important,” Alonso said, via quotes by GP Blog, about winning a race in 2024. “Obviously, this is the first step of, hopefully, good progress in the team. We always said that this was like year one of Aston Martin being competitive.

“A lot of changes in the team, the new factory [and] all these things that we’ve been saying for a long time. So, if next year we do a step back, it’s going to be bad.”

Alonso has not won a Formula 1 race since the 2013 Spanish GP for Ferrari. He has also not taken a pole position since starting the 2012 German GP from P1. But the Spaniard’s target for 2024 is to match or better his podium record from 2023 and help Aston Martin to grow.

“We finished fifth in the constructors,” he continued. “We need to improve that next year. Fourth, third, second, whatever will be welcome. And in my case, after eight podiums this year, hopefully I can do something similar next.”