Fernando Alonso says Aston Martin must retire immediately if they encounter any car problems in tomorrow’s Australian Grand Prix.

The team is short of spare parts at the season-opening race due to problems with their Honda power units. Alonso said the team must ensure it is able to compete at next weekend’s round in China.

“The more laps we do, the more things we learn,” said Alonso. “But at the same time we need to be realistic.

“We are short on parts, as you all know, and we race next week, so we need to have the cars ready to go in China as well, with no spare parts. So tomorrow we need to monitor the situation and at the first sign of something going wrong, we cannot keep running because we need the cars alive for China.”

Alonso was unable to participate in the first practice session yesterday. His team mate Lance Stroll did not run at all on Saturday.

However Alonso said he’s seen significant improvements from the car’s performance when it has been able to run. He was on course to claim the final place in Q2 until he was knocked out by Franco Colapinto.

“Probably yesterday we could all bet that we were not able to go through Q1, and we nearly made it,” said Alonso. “So I think definitely progress since yesterday.

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“We didn’t touch the car much, to be honest, so that tells me that the potential is huge. Without changing anything on the car, from FP2 to FP3 and to quali we were 4.5 seconds behind the leaders and now 2.5 or something like that. We gained two seconds just by running and just by being on track when everyone else is running.

“So I think reliability is hurting a lot the potential of the car if you cannot run continuously and make your set-up work. Because we had a normal FP2, normal FP3, we made huge steps, so we just need to keep on going and stay together through this phase.”

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Keith Collantine

Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 – when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring journalist, Keith began running the site full-time in 2010, achieving a long-held ambition to dedicate his full attention to his passion for motor racing. View all posts by Keith Collantine