The impatient pair who’d hoped to be a thorn in Red Bull’s side again

Aston Martin and McLaren helped prop up a deeply unspectacular Formula 1 campaign for large parts of last year. Aston’s flying start made it the surprise early package, and Fernando Alonso chased the Red Bulls as it became clear that Mercedes and Ferrari had dropped the ball.

But McLaren picked up the mantle when Aston's development path, which attempted to reverse-engineer parts for the 2024 car to fit the AMR23, knocked it well off course. Following McLaren's Austrian GP update, Lando Norris became the second-highest-scoring driver behind only Max Verstappen.

Their seasons showed two different ways to skin a cat: fast out of the gates versus finishing with a flourish. The choice of lead driver is similarly contrasting. Outside of the top three teams, Alonso and Norris are the two most complete contenders on the grid. But they sit at opposing ends of their careers.

The two-time world champion is angling for a return to a frontrunning gig, while Norris is still yet to top a Formula 1 podium, despite many seeing him as a future title winner. He’s watched key junior single-seater near-contemporaries George Russell, Charles Leclerc, Verstappen and Carlos Sainz– and even rookie team-mate Oscar Piastri – all get there first, although Piastri’s win was only a sprint race.

Given his relative youth and an urge to top up the trophy count, 24-year-old Norris might have held the keys to this summer’s driver market merry-go-round. His McLaren deal was due to expire at the end of 2025, so he was plausibly available for a fair price. Red Bull has continually flirted with his signing and the Brit would have been on Mercedes’ shortlist of Lewis Hamilton successors. But he’s recommitted to working in Woking on a new “multi-year” deal.

With Norris out of the way and Leclerc renewing his Ferrari vows, Alonso will now believe that he can save ‘silly season’. Forget that he’s going to turn 43 in July, the Spaniard has been talking up his best-ever fitness test scores and his marketability to prospective employers.

Alonso was surprised to qualify sixth for the Bahrain season opener, ahead of both McLarens, but it appears unlikely the green team will reprise its early 2023 role as Red Bull's biggest challenger

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Ever the protagonist, this is Alonso putting himself in the shop window to land a Mercedes drive should Toto Wolff decide to delay the promotion of protege Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who will contest F2 with Prema Racing in 2024. He could have so easily shut down speculation by pledging his allegiance to Aston.

“Everything that I do in life and everything that I did in the last few months was just to prepare myself better than ever for a very long season,” says Alonso. “To prepare myself also in case I want to keep driving, being better than ever.

“If I commit to a project in the future for the next year or next few years, I need to first ready myself to commit to that… If I want to keep driving it’s because I know, starting from myself, I can give 200% to the team on and off-track, simulator work, marketing work, delivering the results.”

Norris and his colleagues will have to already accept that the best the well-developed MCL38 can fight for is probably second

It’s quite a change in tone from when he spoke at the unveiling of the 2023 car. Back then, he acknowledged that Aston is “probably my last team… unfortunately I’m not 20”. Just one year on, he’s pumped up and talking about conditioning his body to possibly continue until he’s 50!

Of course, Alonso is no stranger to deploying a soundbite to retain maximum media coverage. In 2024, he needs to make sure that he keeps being heard. Especially if Aston doesn’t excel in the early races this time and Alonso ends up plying his trade in the congested midfield, where his undeniable brilliance will yield points rather than headline-grabbing, underdog podiums.

It’s not as though Alonso merely beating his team-mate is enough to bolster his reputation, as it might be for much of the rest of the grid. Dominating Lance Stroll is seen as the minimum expectation, even if the Canadian should fare better in 2024 after missing testing last year due to broken wrists, which then meant he was still recovering while the AMR23 was at the peak of its powers last term.

Norris is in a much tougher position in that regard. Many peddled the notion that Piastri was an even match for his stablemate in the second half of 2023. That can be debunked to some degree by Norris winning the qualifying head-to-head 9-6 with an average delta of 0.15 seconds when measured from the British GP – by which time the Australian had largely found his feet in F1.

Norris edged Piastri in qualifying, but has also seen McLaren overhauled by Ferrari and Mercedes

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Still, Piastri fared better than papaya predecessor Daniel Ricciardo, so provides a far sterner benchmark than Stroll does to Alonso. Norris will need to ensure that he keeps the young pretender in his rear-view mirror to double underline his status as McLaren’s experienced number one.

To help improve his one-lap record versus Piastri further still, Norris has focused over the winter on dialling out the occasional mistakes that creep in when the pressure peaks. His Qatari and Mexican qualifying sessions were undermined by errors. A plausible pole in the Abu Dhabi season finale was denied by a snap of oversteer through the final corners. Some of these were due to the spikey on-the-limit handling of the upgraded MCL60, but a stuttering start that allowed front-row rival Verstappen to waltz into the lead of the Brazil sprint race wasn’t.

“There’s been various things already, both in terms of how I drive, how I work in extracting the performance during laps, understanding these traits, and also then putting them already to the test on the simulator, and trying to improve them,” offers Norris. “Sometimes it’s hard to improve various things until you’re actually in the car and performing, but to the extent of what I can, even if it’s mental things, I’m trying to work on any area I can to improve.”

As ever with pre-season testing, it’s tough to precisely gauge where both squads sit. But there are clues. Alonso is no longer in his honeymoon phase at Aston where everything is rosy. He’s dispensed with talk about how much potential there is left to unlock. This time, while he acknowledges a “step forward” with the car, he’s also busy bigging up Red Bull, telling us his car is “tricky” under braking in a windy Bahrain, and that there’s not enough testing time. It’s a less cautiously optimistic note.

For McLaren, the Sakhir circuit has rarely been kind. The layout hasn’t suited its recent creations at the best of times, but the squad also suffered brake overheating during 2022 testing before bodywork began fouling the year after. No such dramas this time, apart from a small piece of detritus that needed retrieving from the fuel tank.

Perhaps McLaren briefly hoped that as Red Bull revealed such a bold RB20, the dominant team was about to endure an ‘Icarus moment’. Last week’s stellar running for the reigning champions has made that look rather fanciful. So, Norris and his colleagues will have to already accept that the best the well-developed MCL38 can fight for is probably second. Alonso would be happy enough with that from Aston, but the runner-up spot is not why either of these drivers get out of bed in the morning.

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Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images