Alonso saves Aston Martin from a total meltdown in Australia

It shouldn’t really shock anyone — it’s been the story of Fernando Alonso’s career for the past 25 years — but once again, the Spanish veteran single‑handedly kept Aston Martin from suffering one of its worst qualifying disasters in recent memory. Not only did he drag the AMR26 into Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix grid, he came this close to sneaking into Q2. He’ll start 17th on Sunday, even though he finished more than three seconds off the top times.

Context matters: Lance Stroll and Carlos Sainz couldn’t even take part in Q1, and Max Verstappen crashed as he began his lap. In the end, Alonso was knocked out by Franco Colapinto, who pulled off a last‑ditch flyer in an Alpine that really should be competing in a different league. Alonso still beat both Cadillacs by half a second.

“It’s been tough”

“It’s been difficult. I don’t think anything has really changed, but it’s forced everyone in the garage to change,” Alonso said afterward. “The mechanics have been working nonstop, swapping power units day and night all week. On the other side of the garage, they couldn’t even complete a single lap in FP3 or qualifying with Lance — just terrible luck. But once you’re out on track, fighting with a few cars, it’s a lot better than being dead last like we were on Friday. Maybe it helps spark a little motivation in the garage, and as drivers we have the responsibility to keep team morale high during tough moments.”

How did he find the pace?

How did Alonso manage to extract lap time with almost no preseason mileage and so many limitations in practice?

“Having 420 Grands Prix under your belt helps,” he told AS. “You know the track, the conditions, different cars from different eras. I had no issues in FP2 or FP3, which let me run in sync with other cars and work on the setup. Even though the power unit is the same as yesterday, we gained two seconds just by being on track and optimizing a few things on the chassis. There’s huge potential in this car, but we need more laps and more consistency. It’s very fragile, as car No. 18 shows. It’ll depend on the day.”

Sunday’s race? He’s not convinced they’ll finish

Looking ahead to the race — which starts early Sunday morning (U.S. Eastern Time) — Alonso hinted that finishing the full distance may not be realistic.

“We’ll stay flexible and monitor the situation every lap,” he said. “As Adrian mentioned, we’re short on spare parts and China is next week. I hope we can run as many laps as possible, hopefully almost the whole race, but at the first sign something might go wrong, we can’t risk it and jeopardize next weekend. We have to stay very flexible.”

Aston Martin factory goes into crisis‑mode

Meanwhile, much of the Silverstone factory is now focused on salvaging the season by helping Honda resolve its issues.

“The power unit is what it is. We know there’s a power deficit, and that’s going to be harder to fix, but we’ll try to help Honda. A lot of Aston Martin resources are shifting toward Honda to improve the situation. We’re one team — we help each other — and we’ll look for short‑term solutions.”

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