Formula 1, Sportrik Media - Fernando Alonso has acknowledged that Aston Martin began its 2026 Formula 1 pre-season campaign at a disadvantage after missing the majority of the private shakedown in Barcelona, a setback that carried into the official Bahrain test.
The Silverstone-based team was the slowest of the 11 entrants during the opening test in Sakhir and completed the fewest laps overall. In late January at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Alonso and team-mate Lance Stroll managed just 65 laps combined.
Beyond an estimated deficit of four to four-and-a-half seconds to the frontrunners, Aston Martin also encountered multiple technical issues, including challenges linked to the integration of its new power unit supplied by Honda.
“Definitely, we are not in the position we wanted to be, and we started on the back foot,” Alonso told media, including RacingNews365.
He underlined that missing the Barcelona running was a significant blow to the team’s preparation.
“Missing Barcelona was a big thing, because we not only missed Barcelona, but also the filming days before. Other teams had already run their cars in early January and had a month to analyse data and fix small issues — a sensor here, a temperature there.”
According to Alonso, Aston Martin is now addressing those early-stage reliability and integration problems during official testing, rather than focusing purely on performance optimisation.
“We are finding small issues here and there on every single run, and this is affecting the programme. When you are not running cleanly run after run, it is not progressing the setup.”
He explained that interruptions to track time disrupt the planned evaluation of mechanical settings, especially when track conditions evolve between sessions.
“If we plan to test different suspension stiffness settings and then have to stop because of a data issue or sensor change, by the time we go back out the track has changed. That makes it difficult to unlock performance because we don’t run continuously.”
Alonso suggested that rival teams may have already resolved similar early issues during private running or filming days, whereas Aston Martin is only now identifying and correcting them.
“The other teams found these difficulties on the filming days or in the first couple of days in Barcelona, and we are finding them now, unfortunately.”
With further testing still available before the season opener, Aston Martin’s priority remains improving reliability and fully understanding the AMR26 package to reduce the gap to its principal competitors ahead of the 2026 campaign.
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