Fernando Alonso has delivered a glowing assessment of Aston Martin’s recent progress but admitted the team still faces a significant challenge with their Honda power unit.
The Spaniard qualified 18th at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, continuing a difficult weekend that was plagued by persistent power unit problems throughout.
Adrian Newey and Aston Martin introduced a sweeping overhaul of the AMR26 at the Hungarian Grand Prix before the summer break, producing an immediate and noticeable improvement in competitiveness.
Further upgrades were bolted onto the car for the Dutch Grand Prix weekend, with Honda also supplying a new, upgraded power unit for the second half of the season.
Despite those developments, Alonso has been dealing with power unit issues all weekend, qualifying P22 in sprint qualifying on Friday before recovering to 18th in the sprint race itself.
In grand prix qualifying on Saturday, Alonso again ended up in 18th, yet his Q1 time was within one second of Oscar Piastri, who set the fastest lap of the session at that stage.
“In Budapest we made it to Q2, and here we were just one-tenth away,” Alonso told Spanish outlet AS, highlighting the team’s rapid improvement in recent rounds.
“Plus, this is the smallest margin behind the Q1 leader. Piastri was 1.3 seconds [+0.955s] ahead of us. Before, we had an average gap of 4.5 seconds to the best, so we’ve improved by three seconds over two races. It’s encouraging.”
Alonso was emphatic in his praise for the direction the team has taken, describing the progress as remarkable given where they were earlier in the season.
“It’s incredible; everything is working as planned. But it’s a tough sport, and you always have to improve,” the two-time world champion stated.
The Spaniard made clear that the chassis itself is now performing at a strong level, and that further time is available once the power unit issues are resolved by Honda back in Japan.
“There’s lap time to be gained with the handling improvements, but unfortunately, we can’t do much on the track,” Alonso explained, pointing to the need for factory-level solutions.
“We need significant changes from the factory, in the software or wherever it’s needed. This has to come from Japan, and it won’t happen overnight.”
Alonso suggested that Monza could be the next opportunity for Honda to deliver a meaningful step forward with the power unit package.
“It will be closer to Monza, where we need to take another step. And yes, there are a couple of tenths of a second to be gained when it comes to optimising the package,” he added.
Looking ahead to the Sunday race, Alonso pointed to Aston Martin’s traditionally stronger race pace as a reason for optimism despite starting from the back of the field.
“Normally we’re a bit better in race pace; our chassis is very good. When people have old tires, or older than ours, we can rely more on the good grip the chassis gives us and not depend so much on tire grip,” Alonso said.
“And that way we do a better job. Although at the same time we can’t overtake on the straight, so we’re in a difficult situation. We’ll do the best we can.”