Fernando Alonso demands end to Aston Martin 'abuse'

Fernando Alonso has argued that some of the criticism levied at Aston Martin on social media is "borderline abuse" after the team's poor start to the F1 season.

Seven rounds into the campaign, the Silverstone-based squad has scored just one point, which was inherited after Sergio Perez's post-race penalty at the Monaco Grand Prix.

The team's abject underperformance in its first year in partnership with Honda has been one of the dominant narratives of the season.

Whilst Alonso, who has not ruled out retiring from F1 in the not-too-distant future, and Aston Martin have reiterated that results will eventually turn around, the Spanish driver has been linked to a return to Alpine in recent weeks.

"There are always rumours," the two-time F1 drivers' champion told media, including RacingNews365, to partially set the record straight when asked about the speculation.

"We've been very badly treated by the outside world, and it's normal; we are underperforming. We are in a bad moment, and when summer break comes, there are always rumours.

"There are rumours in the top teams. There are rumours also, in our case, because we are underperforming, but my commitment with Aston Martin is beyond my driving time, and I believe in this project, and we have the right people, we have, obviously, the best of the best with Adrian Newey, we have Honda, we started on the back foot, yes, we understand that, but we are trying to put things in place as soon as possible, but we are an easy target, because we are at the back."

Driver

Fernando Alonso

Countering the 'borderline abuse'

Alonso made it clear that some of the reaction to Aston Martin's difficult campaign has gone too far, whilst reaffirming his faith in the fledgling works-team operation.

"There is all this social media, and all these things, and jokes that you can put on ourselves, probably that's borderline abuse on social media, that we talk sometimes that we are not happy with our position," he added.

"But we are hard workers, and Honda are hard workers, and Aston Martin, we are a thousand people of hard workers, who go Monday to Sunday, to work eight hours, to fix our problems; and the problems will be fixed. It's a matter of time."

Despite the team's decision to delay performance-centric upgrades being widely questioned by the media, the 44-year-old underlined that all involved were in agreement over the approach.

"I believe in the project. I trust my team, and we are all in this together," the 32-time grand prix winner said.

"And obviously, we take one of the hardest parts of the situation, because we race every week, and we face the media every week, and we jump in the car tomorrow, and we are very uncompetitive, but our team and our leaders, they decided in Australia to wait until it was worth making an upgrade package, for cost efficiency and things like that, and we all agree on that.

"And we are all waiting on that, and we wait in the best manner possible."