After a very difficult start to the season, Fernando Alonso believes that Aston Martin has finally found the solution to its major problem with Honda. A significant relief for the British team.
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The start of Aston Martin’s 2026 season quickly turned into a nightmare. From the first races, the British team had to deal with significant vibrations caused by its Honda power unit.
The problem had become so serious that Adrian Newey even mentioned a potential risk of permanent nerve damage for Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll due to the violent jolts in the cockpit.
For several weeks, Aston Martin and Honda worked urgently to precisely identify the source of the issue. After the Japanese Grand Prix held at the Suzuka circuit, the team even left a complete chassis in Japan to continue testing directly at Honda’s Sakura site.
An intensive effort that now seems to finally be paying off.
Alonso lets out a huge sigh of relief
Interviewed after the Miami weekend, Fernando Alonso was particularly reassuring about the current situation.
“Gone. I would even say completely gone” he stated about the vibrations that had been disturbing the car since the start of the season.
The two-time world champion mainly explains that the most important thing was to regain confidence in the team’s technical project.
“As long as you don’t exactly understand the problems and solve them one by one, it’s hard to have confidence for further development” Alonso explains.
The data collected during the tests carried out at Sakura were then confirmed under real conditions in Miami, which greatly reassured Aston Martin.
“It was a real relief to see that the measurements taken at Sakura exactly matched what we saw on track in Miami.”
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Even though performance is still far from the leading teams, Alonso believes this step was essential before thinking about progressing elsewhere.
Why Aston Martin brought no upgrades
The total lack of aerodynamic upgrades in Miami surprised part of the paddock, especially after five weeks of break between Suzuka and Florida. However, Alonso says this strategy had been planned for a long time.
“It was the plan from the start” assures the Spanish driver.
According to him, Aston Martin simply had no interest in investing heavily in small upgrades as long as the fundamental problems were not solved.
“Between reliability issues and our current performance limits, it was pointless to bring two or three tenths of gain.”
The assessment is harsh for the British team: despite some potential improvements, the gap with competitors remains huge.
“We are still about a second behind the car in front of us. So even with a few tenths gained, it wouldn’t really change our results.”
Alonso also reveals that the budget cap plays a major role in this cautious strategy.
“We also have to think about a strategy related to the budget cap. So that was the direction planned from the start.”
Aston Martin now seems to be betting on a more competitive second half of the season. But before that, the team will still have to go through several difficult weekends before the arrival of real major upgrades.