(Motorsport-Total.com) – The first races of the 2026 Formula 1 season were tough for Aston Martin, “and the next ten will also be tough,” Fernando Alonso is already announcing. Because according to the two-time world champion, it will take months before Aston Martin moves back up the pecking order of the premier class.
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“I can tell you right now that nothing will change,” Alonso tells DAZN after he and teammate Lance Stroll took the last two places in qualifying at Suzuka over the weekend. In the race, Alonso finished 18th, while Stroll retired.
“We are working hard to improve the situation,” the Spaniard assures, “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 bit better,” says Alonso, who has already given up hope of major progress before the summer. He makes it clear that the cancellation of the races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and the associated April break do not change this.
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“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, Alonso explains.
“So in Miami we will have the same car as here,” he says with regard to the first Grand Prix after the break. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t find solutions by then that we can implement in the second half of the season,” says Alonso.
Because although the 44-year-old is already writing off the first half of the season, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t see light at the end of the tunnel. He points to the 2023 season, when McLaren also had a false start and was at the back of the field in the first two races of the season.
Later in the year, they were regularly on the podium, and in 2024 they even became Constructors’ World Champions. “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.”
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As soon as the major problems are fixed, they will make rapid progress, he hopes. Among other things, he reports that improvements in deployment and drivability have already been achieved since the winter tests in Bahrain. On the other hand, 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,” Alonso admits, but emphasizes that work is going on 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 carry out wind tunnel tests, then you have to carry out CFD simulations, then you have to produce it, then you have to bring it to the race track, and before you know it, it’s July, August,” says Alonso.
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Although Aston Martin already had an upgrade for the front wing and the underbody at the weekend in Suzuka, Alonso emphasizes that this did not bring any performance – which was not the goal 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 them 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. But that won’t happen in the coming months.
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