As the first three days of testing in Bahrain conclude this Friday, with another three days to follow next week, Fernando Alonso addressed the challenging situation at Aston Martin.
The Silverstone-based team is experiencing a difficult start to the 2026 Formula 1 season, lacking both track time and performance, with a car featuring an arguably extreme design and powered by a relatively new Honda power unit. The two-time World Champion, who had high hopes for the 2026 regulation changes, acknowledged that the team’s current struggles stem from accumulated delays.
“We are clearly not in the position we wanted to be,” Alonso admitted. “We started behind. Missing Barcelona was a big problem because it wasn’t just missing the test in Barcelona, it was also missing the filming days beforehand. Some teams were running their cars on January 9th, so now it’s been a month that they’ve been analyzing data and solving problems.”
“A sensor here, the temperature there, whatever… We didn’t run in Barcelona, we didn’t have any filming days before Barcelona or here, and now, for us, this is really the first test here in Bahrain. So we are finding small problems here and there, with each run.”
“And that affects the program a bit: when you don’t run cleanly, run after run, you don’t really make progress with the setup. If we have a program to test three different suspension stiffnesses, we do a run and then something appears in the data, we have to investigate or change the sensor, we move again but it’s an hour later so the track is different. So we also discover limits to unlocking performance because we are not running continuously.”
“But maybe other teams encountered these difficulties during the filming days or in Barcelona during the first days, and we are discovering them now, unfortunately.”
Alonso Remains Confident in Chassis Design
Adrian Newey retains Fernando Alonso’s full confidence.
Photo by: Mario Renzi / Formula 1 via Getty Images
While the current outlook appears bleak, Alonso remains motivated and, crucially, maintains complete faith in Adrian Newey, who designed the AMR26 and has since taken the helm of the team.
“The power unit is a little more difficult because we don’t yet have a good understanding of the regulations and what is needed,” he explained. “But on the chassis side, there are no question marks.”
“After more than 30 years in which Adrian has dominated F1, it’s not as if he’s going to forget everything in one year. I don’t know where we are currently in terms of chassis and grip level, but even if we’re not at 100% now, we will be soon because we will fix all the problems on the power unit. I think we need to give ourselves time and understand where we are and, if we are behind, improve as quickly as possible.”
On Thursday, Lance Stroll painted a concerning picture, reporting a deficit of over four seconds for Aston Martin. Nevertheless, Alonso is clinging to a fluid situation that continues to evolve.
“I did a lap yesterday where I ran wide at Turn 4, and then, until the finish line, I gained eight tenths,” he noted. “It’s just to give you an idea of the number of errors there are in each lap we are doing right now. There are laps where we gain or lose eight tenths by changing a single setting. So it’s not as if we have to find two tenths by optimizing.”
“Maybe we will unlock seconds when we optimize everything. So let’s hope that next week we will have a better vision. As I said, we are realistic. We will not be the fastest in Melbourne. We started behind, but It’s difficult to guess exactly where we are.”
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