Fernando Alonso has delivered a brutal assessment of Aston Martin’s prospects following a challenging Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix.
Alonso and Aston Martin entered the race knowing it was highly likely they would not finish the race given Honda’s ongoing challenges.
The Spaniard took advantage of the chaos at the start of the race to run as high as tenth before beginning to slip back.
The extreme vibrations that have plagued Honda continued unabated on race day, leading to issues for both Alonso and teammate Lance Stroll.
Both would retire from the race before returning to the track to gather more data, with Alonso retiring for good towards the end to preserve components, while Stroll would finish 15 laps down.
Alonso delivered a blunt assessment after the race of Aston Martin’s progress and Honda’s understanding of its reliability issues.
“It is similar to Bahrain, and it is not the best feeling with this level of vibration,” Alonso said to media including Motorsport Week.
“I think Honda thinks the vibrations on the battery are reduced since Bahrain, with some of the modifications, but that hasn’t happened to the chassis yet because they need to isolate the battery in a different way. “
Time critical for Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin
Alonso then delivered a brutal prediction for China, expecting the race to be similar to Melbourne as the team and Honda seek to rescue its disastrous start to 2026.
“So I think it will take a little more time, but we will try to do our best in China and do as many laps as possible to help the team.
“It will be no different, so I expect another tough weekend, but we cannot give up, we need to keep trying different solutions, especially on the chassis to try and get the package better because we are not optimising anything, so China will be another good opportunity.”
Explaining why he retired only to return to the track, Alonso confirmed Aston Martin found and repaired multiple issues.
“The start and the first two laps were the most enjoyable part of the race, being P10 for two laps was unexpected,” he said.
“The starts are not the problem, whilst everyone else was struggling for the boost, it was a clean first lap for us.
“We were completely out of position in P10, so I fell back to P17, and then we had a small issue on the data that we had to stop the car, and then we repaired it, and then went back out again, and another issue appeared, so we stopped for the second time.”
READ MORE: George Russell resists Charles Leclerc fight to score F1 Australian GP triumph
Discussion about this post