Fernando Alonso had a good race at Suzuka. He qualified in fifth place and finished sixth. He couldn’t keep up with Charles Leclerc from Ferrari, but he stayed ahead of George Russell from Mercedes and Oscar Piastri from McLaren at the end.
Alonso thinks that the Aston Martin AMR24 car is the fifth fastest right now. This means they are doing better than expected.
“I wasn’t completely confident,” Alonso said. “You never know how fast the others will be at the end of the race. But I think this was one of my best weekends, maybe even in the top five ever for me. Getting fifth in qualifying and sixth in the race feels really good.”
He explained, “I think we’re clearly the fifth-fastest team. We’re a bit faster than the sixth team but not as fast as the top four teams. We finished sixth in Australia, sixth again here, and fifth in Jeddah. So we’re doing well in the races, but we need to improve our speed.”
Aston Martin boss Mike Krack agreed with Alonso. He said, “Looking at the first five races, we’ve been the fifth or sometimes even fourth fastest team on average. So when the faster cars have problems, we finish ahead of them. But to do that, you have to qualify well too. So, Alonso is right about that.”
Alonso also mentioned that the team is working on making the car faster. “We have some improvements planned for later in the season,” he said. “But for now, we’re doing a good job on race days, getting the most points possible. The pit stops have been really fast, too. But we still need to work on improving our pace.”