Aston Martin 2024 F1 Car launch: Top 3 pre-season targets

Aston Martin will be looking at the 2024 F1 season as a litmus test of what it achieved last season. The team surprised everyone last year when the car was rapidly right out of the gates and consistently attacked the podium.

Fernando Alonso was a frontrunner for a chunk of the first half of the season only to see the car fade away in the second half. The performance in the second part of the season is what makes 2024 a litmus test for Aston Martin.

The team had this false dawn in 2020 as well when it rolled out the 'Pink Mercedes' in its previous guise. That car won a race and secured multiple podiums but was unable to replicate that success the very next season.

Aston Martin would be hoping that the same doesn't happen this time around and the team can continue to build on its momentum. With that being said, what would be the pre-season targets of the 2024 season for the team? Let's take a look.

#1 Aston Martin closing the gap to the front

First and foremost, Aston Martin has to make sure that it closes the gap to the front of the grid because that would be the first sign of progress. It cannot be a team that stands still as compared to last season because the field is shrinking.

More importantly, if the gap is not reduced, you're looking at a scenario where the team loses the credibility it gained last season.

#2 Win a race

This was one target that Aston Martin probably missed in 2023 when it was the closest challenger to Red Bull. Last season only one team other than the Austrian squad won a race. If that question was put forward in the first half of the season, the answer would have been Aston Martin.

It was however the second half and by that time Aston Martin had fallen back. The 2024 F1 season will see the teams bunch up even more. Thus, it has to make sure that it benefits from Fernando Alonso's services and picks up a win.

This has to be the next step in its progress and the team will try to achieve this in 2024.

#3 Secure Fernando Alonso for the long-term

What Fernando Alonso showed in 2024 was that he had still not lost any of his competitiveness. He was still one of the elites in F1 and if a team wanted a driver who could extract the best from the machinery, then he had to be the one.

With the second seat perennially going to Lance Stroll, the first seat has to be occupied by an elite talent, and at the moment Fernando Alonso fits the bill perfectly. The team will hope to get him to sign an extension soon but for that, it needs to ensure that improvement is on the way.