Fernando Alonso is impressed following first day in the heavily upgraded Aston Martin, but admits that there is still a long way to go.

The Spaniard finished 13th in the opening session and 19th in the second, though the team went into the evening missing out on the vital data that should have been provided by his teammate who was sidelined after a suspected suspension failure in FP1.

"It felt good," said the Spaniard after the second session. "I think in general we had what we expected in terms of numbers and correlation, which is obviously very encouraging for the future as well, for next year's car and the future upgrades this year.

"So yeah, still a long way to go for us, obviously starting so far behind, but this is the first step, hopefully, of good ones coming," he added. "We need to study the data more and see a little bit of the overlays," he continued. "But I don't think there are any big surprises or any big deficit in the corners now to the top of the midfield, which is obviously the first of our ambitions, to be at the top of the midfield. And I think in the corners we are matching that kind of pace, so we just need to keep up the work.

"Obviously there are still some steps to go on the chassis side and some steps to go on the engine side as well," he added, Honda's much-anticipated new unit expected at Zandvoort next month. "So, as I said, this is the first of many, but I think there is a positive atmosphere in the team, knowing that we delivered what we expected.

"We had some vibrations on the main straight, especially in FP1," the two-time world champion revealed. "I think the guys fixed it more or less for FP2, so there are no concerns for tomorrow."

"Very early days in terms of understanding the new package, but the provisional results are promising," said Adrian Newey. "It's only part of the package," he explained. "We will have some more steps in Zandvoort, Monza and Baku, so it is the first part of our planned upgrade.

"We're very short on parts," he admitted, "so we're being careful with it and trying to learn all about it.

"It's an evolution," he continued, "in as much as the chassis is the same, the layout's the same, front suspension's the same. So, it's very much an aerodynamic evolution," Newey continued. "We were very short on research time prior to launch of the car back in at Barcelona in February, so, it's really been a matter of taking a step back, trying to understand, and go forward with this package."

The Briton, who has designed championship winning cars for Williams, McLaren and Red Bull, was keen to play down speculation that the upgrade is some sort of magic bullet that will suddenly propel the Silverstone-based outfit up the grid.

"I've never been a fan of setting goals," he said. "I'm much more a fan of working logically through problems, getting everybody working together, getting a culture together, and then at that point, you end up where you end up.

"What I have found over the years is when you're not winning, it seems an impossible mountain to climb. When you are winning, sometimes you're not sure how you got there, because you're not actually doing anything different, or you don't feel as if you're doing anything different."

Referring to Stroll's issue, he said: "Everybody is feverishly trying to understand what went wrong and it is only once we have an understanding that we can comment on what we do next. The area involved is not what has been changed, so in that sense it was very unexpected."