Aston Martin’s poor start to the 2026 season has left Fernando Alonso in a difficult place mentally, says team principal Adrian Newey.
The team’s running has been limited in the season-opening weekend due to a serious shortage of spare batteries for their Honda power unit. The engine also produces extremely high vibrations, which limit how long the car can be driven for.
Aston Martin came into the season with high hopes after investing heavily in their factory and agreeing a works power unit supply deal with Honda. However Alonso has been in a similar situation before, enduring three deeply uncompetitive years at McLaren when Honda last returned to F1.
Now 20 years since his last world championship victory, Aston Martin was viewed by many as Alonso’s last and best chance to claim a third title. Newey said the depth of the team’s problems has hit the driver hard.
“Fernando, in my opinion, he’s one of the true greats. [With] his ability, his talent, his all-round capability, he should have won, in truth, far more than the two championships he has to his name, and however many race wins.
“He’s […] in his forties but he’s still super-quick, super-talented, super-sharp. Talking to him, he doesn’t feel as if he’s suffering in any way. His eyesight’s still very good, and his reactions, apparently he’s very proud of the fact that he was the fastest starter last year on reaction time.
“So, he’s an amazing person and so we all, I suppose, were trying to contain our hopes because we knew this was going to be a difficult year, a build year. Certainly on the chassis side, on AMR’s side.
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“We started very late, with a very compressed cycle. Not trying to make excuses, but it means we knew that certainly the first part of the season we were likely to be a bit behind, but hopefully with the potential, which I still believe we have on the chassis side, to catch back up, or would have done without the distraction that’s now caused. So, for Fernando it’s a hard mental place to be in at the moment.”
Alonso did no laps in the first practice session due to problems with his car. He covered 18 laps in second practice and set the 20th-quickest time, almost five seconds off the pace.
Afterwards he said he remained hopeful the team would be able to make progress. “We are much less negative than the media and the people around,” Alonso told the official F1 channel. “It’s nice to tell the story when someone is doing great and when someone is doing wrongly or things are not going well, you try to exaggerate both ends.
“We know where we are. As I said yesterday, we have a big challenge in front of us, but everyone in the team is embracing the challenge and trying everything we can to go out of the situation. This is Formula 1, unfortunately the technology is very complex and things require a little bit of time and we are running every day on free practice and every week grand prix to grand prix and maybe we don’t see the progress that we all want to see.
“But there are things happening, smaller or bigger, but there is always progress in the team. So let’s hope that it’s visible in lap time as soon as possible.”
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