One word sums up how Aston Martin staff are feeling after Hungarian Grand Prix upgrades

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Aston Martin’s Hungarian Grand Prix upgrades delivered the performance that staff were expecting. Their ‘nightmare’ has ended, but they see no reason to celebrate.

The B-spec AMR26 featured several updates from Adrian Newey, with talk suggesting that they would gain two seconds of performance. Aston Martin spent huge money on the new package, and it paid off.

Fernando Alonso reached Q2 for the first time this season, and came home to finish 14th in the race, with Lance Stroll finishing ahead in 13th. It does not look like much progress, but they were a lap down instead of two and much closer to the midfield.

Is Fernando Alonso living in la la land, or do you still think Adrian Newey can lead Aston Martin to the very top?

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Aston Martin staff have ‘relief’ over Hungarian Grand Prix upgrades but ‘no one’ was celebrating

The Silverstone outfit’s progress came as a shock to the team. While the Honda power unit is still the slowest on the grid, Newey’s updates to the car made Aston Martin faster than several teams, including Williams, Haas and even Alpine.

Aston Martin have made Williams the laughing stock of the paddock with their upgrades, but the team see no reason to celebrate. Journalist Josh Suttill says they are only relieved with what the new spec produced, and how to see things kick on after the summer break.

READ MORE: All to know about Aston Martin F1 Team from team principal to lineage

“Relief is probably the word I’d use,” he said via The Race F1 Podcast. “No one in that team was running around the paddock doing laps and celebrating and spraying champagne.

“Because they know, obviously, they’re not in Formula 1 to finish, what,13th and 14th, or get through to Q2 by the skin of their teeth.

“They’re here to win races and podiums and championships. But even so, this has been a nightmare start to this project, and as Adrian knew, he was asked in the press conference, I think he said, ‘This is going to be the first day of a dream starting and the end of the nightmare.’

Here’s how the F1 championship looks at the summer break. Predict the top five at the end of the season 👇

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“I think that’s what this weekend was, the end of absolute awful pace. They had the slowest car and the slowest engine. They’ve still got the slowest engine for now, but they’re got no longer the slowest car.

“So big objective ticked off. The upgrade has most importantly done what the team expected. I asked Mike Krack if it was kind of on the upper end of their expectations.

“But he said, ‘No, it’s delivered what they expected.’ They knew they’d take this performance leap. The only surprise he said was that they were so far ahead of some of the other teams. But all they’re focused on is just making this car as quick as possible.”