Alonso encouraged by Aston Martin's new package: 'Lot more potential to unlock'

For the first time this season, an Aston Martin car made it through to Q2, as Alonso qualified in 16th place. This came after the Silverstone-based team introduced its first major update package of the season for the Hungarian Grand Prix, featuring 16 changes.

"Yeah, definitely [happy]. I think when you bring nearly a new car, it is important to have the correlation right and you deliver what you expect to deliver. So even if it's what we expected, I think it was important to have it and not have a nasty surprise," the former two-time world champion began to GPblog, among others, after the session.

According to the Spaniard, there is still a lot to gain from this new package. "We're still not on top of the package. Now in qualifying, we again relearned something on the balance of the car.

Alonso also said that this can help his team gain momentum. He continued: "I think it was important. Definitely it was important for everyone in the team, as you know, it has been a tough period in both factories, having the deficit that we had in terms of performance in the first half of the year.

"It's not anymore that we are chasing something that we don't know, we know exactly what we are looking for, and we know exactly the targets for the next package or the targets for next year. So that's I think for me the biggest change of this weekend," he concluded.