Alonso warns 'no magic bullet' after Aston Martin slump

Fernando Alonso has warned there will not be a "magic bullet" tohelp Aston Martin advance up the grid after a disappointing end tohis first season with the team. The Silverstone-based outfit took astep forward in F1's Constructors' standings from its 2022 effortsby virtue of its early-campaign form that saw Alonso secure sixpodiums in the opening eight races. But having once been MaxVerstappen and Red Bull's nearest challenger at the front of thegrid, Aston Martin ultimately slipped to fifth in the standings,slipping behind Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren in the developmentrace. Part of the AMR23's late-season struggles came from a narrowset-up window and asked whether this was prominent at the start ofthe year or whether upgrades brought about the issues, Alonso toldmedia including RacingNews365.com : "I think a consequence a littlebit of the development of the car. "But it is the same foreverybody. When you try to extract that extra performance from thecar, you need to sacrifice some areas to gain in some others, soyou start narrowing the window. "I think we have some ideas [forthe new season] and everything should be better." 'We need to keepan eye' Aston Martin will hope to reverse the backwards step thatwas taken with the developments throughout last season with arefreshed effort when racing gets underway in Bahrain on March 2.Providing optimism this will be achieved, Alonso explained: "Thereare clear indications of some parts of the car that wereunderperforming for a few events. "There were also differentphilosophies in the pit lane but also, for us, in the way you triedto extract the performance of these cars. "Now, with all theexperiments and all the knowledge of this year, we think weunderstand the direction to develop the car better, but thesethings are moving constantly. "I don't think there is a magicbullet to develop the car, otherwise, it would be very easy foreveryone. "But things you maybe trust now, in six months time -because the trend in the pit lane is to move the airflow in adifferent way - it feels it gets outdated very quickly, so we needto keep an eye."