Aston Martin confirms launch date for AMR24

Other F1 teams that have announced dates of their own new car launches include Williams and Sauber who get the ball rolling (unless another team breaks cover earlier) a week earlier on 5 February, with Ferrari going public with their 2024 challenger on 13 February.

The team have also announced a competition for an F1 fan to win a trip to the team's launch, enter here if you are interested>>>

Lst season Aston Martin were the surprise package at the start of the season as Alonso's seven podiums in the first eight races testify. They were on to a good thing with the AMR23. But, suggesting they did not know how they 'lucked' into such a good car, their upgrades bombed.

Although they persisted, they never found the performance they had - best of the rest behind Max Verstappen and Red Bull - early on until they reverted to the baseline package. Thereafter Alonso, and even Stroll, were stronger but a large chunk of expense, effort and time were put into the upgrades that were probably binned.

The off-season will tell if Aston Martin engineers now understand the concept that served them so for half a season and will make up for lost time in their chase of the benchmark set by the RBR-Max combo.

In the wake of Red Bull's domination (21 wins out of 23 races) veteran double F1 World Champion Alonso is cautious ahead of the new season: "I don't think it's going to change much because there are too many unknowns every season [but] anything can happen in Formula 1.

"When we hit the track in winter testing or race one next year, I think we will see how things are and be very open with whatever targets we set for the championship. We will hopefully be competitive again, fighting for regular points and podiums, hopefully for our first win – that would be the dream – but we cannot underestimate the challenge.

"That's why this season feels amazing. If we set expectations too high – unrealistically high – there's a danger of the opposite happening," warned Alonso.

The Spaniard 42-year-old shocked the F1 establishment by ditching Alpine for Lawrence Stroll's mega project. Looking ahead, Alonso said: "This being my second year with the team will help. I don't need to do many of the things I had to do at the start of this year:

"I don't need to put names to all the faces; I don't need to do seat fittings, learn the terminology and do all of the other accommodations that have to happen when you're a new driver in a team.

"Everything will just be easier. We can focus more on performance and preparation for the first couple of races right from day one. We also have a very strong baseline to work with from 2023. When we arrive at a race, the work we do will be an optimisation of what we did this year.

"The 2022 car was perhaps not good enough as a reference for us this year, and on many weekends, we were starting from zero. 2024, it should be easier in terms of preparation, and we can focus more on detail," added Alonso.

Provided of course, the Aston Martin AMR24 that will break cover on Tuesday, 12 February, is a fast car because Fernando will do the rest.