Fernando Alonso is not yet writing off the 2026 season and points to “huge potential” – but we won’t see it in the coming months
The first races of the 2026 Formula 1 season were tough for Aston Martin, “and the next ten will be tough too”, Fernando Alonso is already announcing. Because according to the two-time world champion, it will be months before Aston Martin moves back up the pecking order in the premier class.
“I can already tell you that nothing will change,” Alonso told DAZN after he and team-mate Lance Stroll took the last two places in qualifying at Suzuka at the weekend. In the race, Alonso finished 18th and Stroll retired.
“We are working hard to improve the situation,” the Spaniard assures us, “but in Formula 1, miracles don’t happen from one weekend to the next. So we will continue to work on it, but the first half of the year will be very tough,“ he announces.
”Hopefully the second half will be a little better,” says Alonso, who has already given up hope of major progress before the summer. The cancellation of the races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and the associated April break will not change this, he clarifies.
McLaren as a role model for “dream scenario”
“The only thing we are avoiding is finishing last in Bahrain and Jeddah,” he emphasizes and assures: “We will work for a month to improve.” But the development plan is already set “three or four months” in advance, explains Alonso.
“So we will have the same car in Miami as we do here,” he says with regard to the first Grand Prix after the break. “But that doesn’t mean that we won’t find solutions by then that we can implement in the second half of the season,” says Alonso.
Although the 44-year-old has already written off the first half of the season, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. He points to the 2023 season, when McLaren also got off to a false start and finished at the back of the field in the first two races of the season.
The team then regularly finished on the podium later in the year and even became constructors’ world champion in 2024. “Maybe that’s too optimistic. That’s a dream scenario. But we know that the season is long,“ says Alonso, who emphasizes: ”The car has huge potential, as does the engine.”
Once the major problems have been resolved, progress will be made quickly, he hopes. Among other things, improvements have already been made in terms of deployment and drivability since the winter tests in Bahrain, he reports. On the other hand, however, they are still struggling with vibrations and need more power.
Why progress takes so long
“There are fundamental things where we are still lagging behind,” admits Alonso, but emphasizes that work is being done at full speed behind the scenes. He reports that some ideas in the factory look “very positive”, but simply still need time.
First you have to develop a plan for an update, “then you have to do wind tunnel tests, then you have to do CFD simulations, then you have to produce it, then you have to put it on the track, and then it’s July, August,” says Alonso.
At the weekend in Suzuka, Aston Martin already had an upgrade for the front wing and the underbody. But Alonso emphasizes that this did not bring any performance – which was not the aim of the new parts at all.
“The upgrades are just small changes that we test on the car to find out if what we think is the problem is actually the problem,” he explains, adding: “So when we test these upgrades, they show us whether we are on the right track in the factory or not.”
“But it’s not about increasing performance. They just give us a direction,” says the Spaniard, who has not given up hope of getting a competitive car in 2026 after all. However, this will not happen in the coming months.
