The step Aston Martin has made with its overhauled Formula 1 car has been \u201ceye-opening\u201d for its rivals who can \u201conly dream\u201d of making such a big performance gain. <\/p>\n
Aston Martin has delivered a huge upgrade to its ill-born AMR26 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, which showed \u201cpromising\u201d signs on Friday and got Fernando Alonso out of grand prix Q1 for the first time this season. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s also been a huge wake-up call for rival teams.<\/p>\n
Cadillac\u2019s Valtteri Bottas admitted to being \u201ca bit scared\u201d that Aston Martin\u2019s upgrade would leave it as the slowest team, having done well to pull away from Aston Martin in recent rounds. <\/p>\n
He\u2019d heard rumours of a two-second improvement from Aston Martin\u2019s Hungaroring upgrade and Bottas reckoned, after qualifying 21st, over seven tenths off Alonso in Q1, that \u201cI don’t think [Aston Martin’s upgrade] is far off” the rumoured gain. <\/p>\n
Team-mate Sergio Perez isn\u2019t sure his car was put back together completely right after the issue that forced him to stop in FP3, which might necessitate a pitlane start. So Perez being 1.2s off Alonso can\u2019t be taken as fully representative, but Cadillac has clearly been leapfrogged in Hungary. <\/p>\n
But it wasn’t the only one convincingly beaten by Alonso\u2019s Aston Martin, as the faster Williams – of Carlos Sainz – was half a second slower. <\/p>\n
Sainz expected the Hungaroring to be Williams\u2019s \u201cworst track of the season\u201d, but he was still impressed by the margin Aston Martin has pulled ahead by.<\/p>\n
He hopes Williams will take the Aston Martin step forward as motivation to do the same, rather than be beaten down by the disappointment of being surpassed by it. <\/p>\n
But team-mate Alex Albon called it \u201ceye-opening\u201d – as he is convinced it\u2019s the kind of step Williams won\u2019t be able to replicate with its own upcoming major upgrade at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in September.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t know what kind of upgrade that Aston had, but I could only dream of that,\u201d Albon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could only dream of an upgrade like that, – was it net, possibly, the gain, one and a half, two seconds? I mean, fair play to them. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re going to be fighting with them in some races purely because of the straightline speed, but I can tell you in the corners they’re considerably faster than us. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s eye-opening because, also for us, we know what our Baku upgrade is. It’s not that. So we have work to do.\u201d <\/p>\n
Alonso also beat the second Haas of Ollie Bearman, who was knocked out of Q1 for the first time since Monaco. Even if Aston Martin used three sets of softs to Bearman’s two, he admitted it’s “really painful” to be fighting with and losing to the AMR26.<\/p>\n
“It shows that we’re really fighting and struggling at the moment,\u201d Bearman said.<\/p>\n
He’d had to sit out FP1 so Ryo Hirakawa could drive and in FP2 he struggled with a \u201creally poor through-corner balance\u201d that put him on the back foot. <\/p>\n
Team-mate Esteban Ocon called Aston Martin\u2019s upgrade \u201cquite impressive\u201d and admitted \u201cthey are a threat\u201d. <\/p>\n
More to come <\/p>\n
Alonso was pleased the upgrade had delivered what the team expected, without any \u201cnasty surprise\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWe’re still not on top of the package. Now in qualifying we again relearn something on the balance of the car so if we have another session I think we will change the set-up again and we go with a different set-up – so I think it’s still early days.<\/p>\n