A "happy and relaxed" Fernando Alonso issued a rallying cry that there's much more to come this year for Aston Martin after his ninth-place finish at the Dutch Grand Prix.
Alonso recorded the team's best result of the season at the race where beleaguered engine supplier Honda brought its first proper engine upgrade of the season, while the team also kept tweaking its aerodynamic package.
Aston Martin had already brought a major car upgrade to the Hungarian Grand Prix before F1's summer break.
After the finish, team boss Adrian Newey told Alonso on the radio: "Well done Fernando, that was a great drive. Very disciplined and a great boost for everybody back at Silverstone [the team's HQ]. Thank you."
Alonso replied: "Yeah, absolutely. Thanks to you guys. Everyone in Silverstone, amazing.
"Lovely car to drive, and more to come, I know."
Aston Martin had come into F1's new regulations hoping to turn years of investment and recruitment into a strong package but found itself flailing at the back of the pack for the first half of the year. Alonso's Zandvoort result was built off the back of a 35-lap first stint on soft tires that propelled him up the order.
The two-time world champion has waited patiently for Aston Martin to show improvements, and he expects them to keep coming.
"Congratulations to the team. Formula 1 is not a mysterious sport," he added. "You have to bring performance and outperform competitors to score points, and it's what we are doing. So congratulations everyone in Silverstone.
"Hopefully, we can bring more, we can use this motivation and this momentum into the next few races and keep learning about the package."
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With Aston Martin's aerodynamic package clearly now making strides forward, Alonso said the onus is on Honda to keep improving their own side of the car package to help propel the team up the order further by the end of the year.
"In general, we are still not in the place we want to be in terms of drivability," he said.
"The downshifts, engine braking seems a little bit random, corner by corner. So these kind of things that we still need to fine-tune. And the deficit on power, we still lose a lot on the straights.
"So now that we are more or less competitive in the corners, we need to improve that," he added. "But we are trying to do all this together.
"We need to give time to Honda as well to figure out what is the problem and where to fix it."
Signing off, he said he had faith in the team's employees at Silverstone and Honda's in Japan. "I'm happy, I'm relaxed. I trust both Silverstone and Sakura," he added.
