Formula 1 paddock left ‘stunned’ by improvement one team made during pre-season in 2023

Follow us on Google Discover

The improvement made by Aston Martin during the winter before the 2023 season caught many other teams on the grid off guard.

Led primarily by new driver Fernando Alonso alongside Lance Stroll, the team moved from seventh to fifth in the Constructors’ Championship.

A report from The Athletic has shared more details about how they managed to achieve this feat.

When Sebastian Vettel announced his retirement last year, all eyes were on how Aston Martin were going to replace him.

Just days later, Fernando Alonso was announced as his replacement which was seen as a huge coup for the team.

There were question marks over why the Spaniard wanted to make the switch from the French team but ultimately it appears to have paid off.

Alonso worked incredibly hard behind the scenes as soon as he joined Aston Martin and the immediate improvement was clear at the start of the 2023 season.

The 42-year-old scored six podiums in his first eight races and the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari didn’t see them coming.

However, they still couldn’t quite pip Red Bull to earn their first win in Formula 1.

F1 paddock stunned by Aston Martin’s improvement in 2023

The report from The Athletic suggests that the development shown by Aston Martin last winter ‘stunned’ the F1 pack.

This was a team whose best finish in 2022 was sixth place and six of Stroll’s eight points-scoring finishes saw him finish tenth.

A trio of third-place finishes for Alonso at the start of 2023 highlighted the incredible improvement Aston Martin had made and even Stroll managed a fourth place in Melbourne.

As the season went on, Aston Martin’s rivals caught up and overtook the British team, eventually finishing the season in fifth.

The work they did over the summer was replicated and surpassed by McLaren midway through the year and Lando Norris’s run of late form mirrored Alonso’s early results.

All eyes will be on whether Aston Martin can replicate last winter’s work again this year.

With the rules not changing before the 2024 campaign every team should have a strong understanding of what’s going to help them going forward.