How Aston Martin aced their 2023 challenger and upset people in the F1 grid: "They put their ego aside"

Former F1 driver and Sky Sports pundit Karun Chandhok praised the Aston Martin F1 team for the impressive turnaround in their performance in the first race of the season.

The British team were found wanting after they developed a wrong concept at the start of the new regulations last season. However, they quickly assessed their mistakes and made progress in 2022 before finally becoming the second-fastest team on the grid this season behind Red Bull.

While appearing on the Sky Sports Podcast, Chandhok said:

"The reality is last year Aston Martin started the year with a car that wasn't very good. They put their ego aside, were willing to throw away the time and effort that they invested in that, and ultimately made the decision for Barcelona to produce a copycat Red Bull, which upset a lot of people at Red Bull last year. It kind of meant they wrote off a big chunk of last season while they had to understand."

"When you go off and copy something, that doesn't mean you fully understand it - we've seen that at Haas before where they had a copycat Ferrari but couldn't set it up. Red Bull was annoyed by it and is still annoyed by it but Aston spent last year understanding the philosophy and then they've improved on it. They've produced this car which is already based on the strong package of last year."

"It seems real, the performance" - Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso

Despite standing on the podium in Bahrain, Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso tampered with his expectations for the upcoming races. The Spaniard mentioned that AMR23's performance does look good but stated that he wanted to test it out on a different layout. He said:

"It seems real, the performance. Let's see in Jeddah. I am curious to go to Jeddah and Australia. Very different circuits… high-speed corners, very little degradation. I think in Bahrain, we were strong in things that maybe we don't find in Jeddah and Australia. So, if we are strong in the next two races, I think we will have a very good 2023."

As the two-time world champion Alonso mentioned, it will be fascinating to see where Aston Martin finds itself in the next two races. If the team is competitive on two different tracks like Bahrain and Jeddah, then they might just challenge the mighty Red Bull in 2023.