Fernando Alonso believes Aston Martin's season could be transformed by its huge post-summer break upgrade after a major breakthrough in Monaco.
The two-time champion scored the team's first point of the season with 10th place in Monte Carlo, after Sergio Perez was penalised after a difficult first six races with the AMR26 machine.
The team was initially battling severe vibrations in the first races before attention was drawn to major concerns over the gearbox, which Aston has built for the first time itself in 2026 after years of buying a Mercedes unit.
Aston Martin has taken the decision not to introduce any major upgrades until the summer break to allow it to focus on understanding its problems and having time to find solutions, with the team set to deploy a huge package after the summer break.
Whilst he was downbeat about the performance in Monaco - speaking before news of Perez's penalty and his promotion to the points filtered through - Alonso felt there was a light at the end of the tunnel for the team - but that it would still be a number of races before arriving.
"I think we took a lot of risk on Lap 1, and then we tried to consolidate whatever position we were in. We were aggressive on strategy by stopping on Lap 3, and then around the safety car time, we took opportunities with different penalties," Alonso told media, including RacingNews365.
"It was difficult because it is very easy to crash, you are P19, and you crash, and you look stupid on TV, like in FP1, I crashed into the wall braking for the chicane, and you are three seconds off the pace and still crashing, it is not because you ran out of talent.
"It is that the car is very difficult and on edge.
"[There are] zero positives from the weekend, and we've been racing on very different circuits so far this year, and all of them were clear for us in terms of understanding our weaknesses.
"In Australia, we found our engine was very down, in China we found our energy was down, in Monaco, we found our chassis is down and in Canada, we found our gearbox was down and in Miami, it was very bad.
"Each circuit exposed some of our weaknesses in the car, but the good thing is that it brings a very good understanding of what action is needed in each of the areas for the second part of the year.
"The package that we will try to bring will try to tackle those problems at once rather than individually, so I have full faith and trust in the team because our impression and feeling is that the car will change dramatically from what we are facing now.
"We just need to wait another four or five races."
Originally published by RacingNews365 —
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