Aston Martin 'in a much better place' - Alonso

Fernando Alonso says Aston Martin start the new season "in a much better place" than they ended a difficult 2024 as they launch their new car.

New team principal and chief executive officer Andy Cowell said the car's aerodynamic package is "close to 100% new" in an attempt to improve their performance.

Aston Martin finished fifth last season for the second year running, and fell back through the field in both 2023 and 2024 as their developments failed to deliver the necessary performance.

But hopes are high for a better season as a state-of-the-art new simulator and wind tunnel come on stream at a new factory finished last year, and with design genius Adrian Newey joining on 3 March as part of a major leadership restructure.

"We think we will catch up pretty soon," said Alonso.

The veteran Spanish two-time world champion said the team had been working with the new simulator this winter to better understand why developments did not perform as expected over the past two years.

"We did learn a lot last year, the second part of the season [there were] a lot of experiments going on in the way of learning more things in the 2025 car," Alonso said.

"The simulator has been updated so we have been working a lot in the sim to develop the car a little bit more precisely than the last few seasons.

"We have new tools, new organisation, new people in place to tackle some of the weaknesses we identified last year, so we start in a much better place."

Images of the new Aston Martin were released on Sunday. The car will take to the track in Bahrain for a brief shakedown on Monday before F1's official, three-day pre-season test starts on Wednesday. The season begins with the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on 14-16 March.

Cowell said Aston Martin had pushed their aerodynamic design "later than ever before" before committing to the first specification of the car.

This, he said, had "enabled the aero development team to spend several more weeks in the wind tunnel and we're looking forward to seeing that on track and the results and how the on-track results correlate with the measurements done on campus".

Cowell, the former Mercedes engine boss who joined the team in October and was made team principal in a restructure in January, said Aston Martin's failings last season and in 2023 were a consequence of the correlation between their development work, in the virtual world and wind tunnel, failing to translate accurately to the track.

"We have a reasonable understanding on last year's car," he said. "And what we've worked on through the winter is to try and create a car that is more stable through-corner and is more predictable through the race, and we feel that will reward us well with regards to race performance."

Cowell said this season was "important" for the team to establish whether they have understood where they were failing.

"The car we produce in Melbourne and the upgrades we produce the year will show whether we have managed to piece it all together," he said.

"It's important we get to the point that our toolset works well together and having confidence in those tools ahead of going racing in 2026."

Next year, F1 introduces arguably its biggest set of rule changes ever with new engines and new aerodynamics regulations being introduced concurrently.

At the same time Aston Martin will transition from using customer Mercedes engines this year to becoming Honda's factory team next season.

Their hope is that Newey's arrival as managing technical partner in time to have significant input into the 2026 design will help the team vault up the grid.

Alonso is under contract to the end of 2026, when he will be 45. He partners Lance Stroll, son of the billionaire team owner Lawrence Stroll, for the third consecutive season this year.

"Fernando has always been a phenomenal competitor, hasn't he?" Cowell said. "And his work rate is amazing. His contribution in terms of, you know, performance drive is amazing.

"We're lucky that we've got both Fernando and Lance on long-term contracts. And that's not a problem at the moment. Our challenge is coming up with a fast race car and giving it to both of them to do well.

"Age is a number. Fernando is a phenomenal individual today, and he's very welcome in our team.

"Fernando's experiences and feedback are amazing. His feedback from the simulator, exceptionally good feedback in every session, amazing. And also his prioritisation.

"We're all guilty, aren't we, of coming up with a list of 12 things that we'd like to improve? It's a strength, if you can bring that down to three priorities that really, really matter. And Fernando is very good at that."