Dejected Alonso sees it slipping away: 'We're not there anymore'
F1 News
- Ludo van Denderen
Seven different drivers have already won at least one Grand Prix in 2024. One man is missing from the list of names: Fernando Alonso. Where it seemed last season that the Spaniard finally had a real chance of breaking Max Verstappen's dominance to take that coveted victory number 33, Aston Martin now lags behind Red Bull Racing, Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren in terms of development. It could have been so nice for Alonso, but where Verstappen was so close at first, the Dutchman is now so far away.
Alonso shrugged: "That is the way it is," the Spaniard, who is now 43, told the likes of GPblog. "I think last year we were the best of the rest but Red Bull was, I mean, unbeatable. They never had a bad pit stop, they never had a crash, they never had a bad qualifying, they never had any problem. And then we just were third or second all the time."
"All the pictures of my podiums last year, I have Checo and Max with me or first second or first and third, and I was in the middle. Things changed a little bit and we were not there to take the opportunity. We said many times last year, we need to keep up. We need to be always hunting them, and when they have any crack, we are there to take the opportunity. When they started to have any kind of problem, we were not there anymore. So it's a bit up to us that we were not able to keep up with that pace," Alonso said.
Alonso dropped far back in the standings
Meanwhile, McLaren is the team that has passed Red Bull in terms of performance, while Mercedes and Ferrari have also clearly distanced themselves from Aston Martin. In the drivers' championship, Alonso 'only' occupies ninth place, where he still ended the 2023 season in fourth.
This article has been written in collaboration with Matt Gretton