– What must be going through Fernando Alonso’s mind right now? In anticipation of the 2026 season, Aston Martin was considered a dark horse for the title that the Spaniard has long desired. But they are far from that. On the contrary: it would be a miracle if Aston Martin manages more than a handful of laps in the Melbourne race.
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In the first practice session, Alonso could not go out on track at all because there was “a new problem with the internal communication of the battery with its management system,” as Team Principal Adrian Newey explained. In the second practice session, the Spaniard at least managed 18 laps – with a gap of almost five seconds to the top.
“To be honest, there wasn’t much to learn,” the two-time world champion draws a sobering conclusion. “Unfortunately, the Honda problem in FP1 and also some Honda problems in FP2 somewhat limited our lap count today. We really couldn’t use that again,” he says.
The problems at Aston Martin are manifold: the biggest, however, are the vibrations in the engine, which lead to inconsistencies in the battery. Honda has no more of these apart from the two in the car, so Aston Martin has to save the material if they want to get to drive at all – a vicious circle.
No spare batteries: Alonso “disappointed” by Honda
Yet the team actually needs to run laps to learn something about the car and the difficulties. “We have some catching up to do,” says Alonso. “Of course, we brought a completely new package to this race and we need to understand where to use this package in terms of set-up.”
Aston Martin is naturally also far from proper set-up work. Alonso hopes that he can at least complete many laps tomorrow in the third practice session.
We didn’t manage too many laps today, so hopefully a cleaner FP3 tomorrow. But whether that is possible given the restrictions Honda has given – the team is also not allowed to run extensively with low fuel – is questionable. “I don’t know,” Alonso shrugs. “I just drive the car. That’s not a question for me, but for Honda.”
When asked about the situation regarding missing batteries, the Spaniard also refers to the engine partner: “As I said, I drive the car. Of course, I’m disappointed that we don’t have a stock, [since Honda] only supplies one team, but that’s the situation, so that’s a question for them.”
Newey praises: Alonso “one of the truly greats”
Alonso can basically forget about the long-awaited third world title – the first in 20 years – before the season has even begun. There probably aren’t many opportunities left for him, after all, he will already be 45 years old in the summer.
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Team Principal Adrian Newey knows that this is a difficult situation for his star driver: “He is one of the truly greats,” he says. “His abilities, his talent, his overall skill – he should have won far more than the two championships he has to his name, and however many race wins.”
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“He is still super fast, super talented, super sharp. When you talk to him, you don’t get the feeling that he is lacking in any way. His vision is still very good. His reactions – he is apparently very proud that he was the fastest starter in terms of reaction time last year.”
Only: that won’t bring him sporting success. “We all tried to keep our hopes in check because we knew this would be a difficult year, a building year,” Newey admits.
“Certainly, on the chassis side at AMR, we started very late with a very compressed cycle. I’m not trying to make excuses, but it means we knew we would probably be a little behind, at least in the first part of the season.”
“Mentally difficult situation”
But the hope was that the deficits could be made up over the course of the season – if Honda’s problems hadn’t intervened. Newey admits: “For Fernando, it’s a mentally difficult situation at the moment.”
But the Spaniard tries to be combative and also find optimistic words: “Everyone is working on a better situation,” he says. “We know the challenge ahead of us. It’s a big challenge. We accept it and we tackle it. Everyone is just doing their best.”
“Of course, everything is exaggerated when you do things very well and when you do things very poorly. Both ends are usually exaggerated, and we are currently at that lower end. We are making progress. Sometimes it’s visible in the lap time, sometimes not. And it’s frustrating, but everyone is working on a solution.”
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