The recent story of the Aston Martin F1 team is fascinating. Rewind a couple of years to early 2023 and Fernando Alonso and his green team were the feel good story of the sport, racking up the podiums with such regularity we all started dreaming about them becoming real contenders at least for race wins. We even dared dream that maybe the Spaniard would at last have a crack at a third title in the near future, nearly 20 years after his last.
Fast forward to today and that dream has turned into a nightmare. Aston Martin went from scoring 280 points in 2023 to just 94 in 2024, a staggering 572 points behind McLaren with exactly the same power unit. As the circus left Barcelona this year, Alonso had scored his first two points of the season and the team languished with Sauber in second to last place in the 2025 Constructors’ championship, ahead only of Alpine.
The absence of a single podium in 2024 was clearly a concern but the bigger worry was the lack of progress as the season went on, reflecting a trend that dates back to the 2023 Spanish Grand Prix after which the team steadily started to lose competitiveness relative to the opposition. In the early part of 2023, Aston was just 0.57 per cent away from the pace-setting Red Bull, but the average gap from Spain onwards had almost doubled to 1.05 per cent. It continued its slide down this slippery slope through 2024 and into this year, while having to watch the likes of Williams, Racing Bulls and Haas take big strides forward.
