Fernando Alonso sets a timeline for Aston Martin’s rebuild: “Give it a couple of months”

Fernando Alonso is starting to talk in timelines — and that alone says a lot about where Aston Martin stands right now. Speaking to AS, the two‑time world champion estimated that “a couple of months” is what the team needs before it can finally stop living at the back of the grid and start imagining regular fights for Q2. The long‑term target? The final third of 2026, with McLaren’s dramatic turnaround in 2023 serving as the blueprint.

“We’ll see in a couple of months,” Alonso told AS. “We saw McLaren running last at the start of 2023 and finishing near the front by the end of the season. Maybe that’s too optimistic — it’s the dream scenario — but the season is long. If we understand the problems and fix them, we’ll have plenty of time to make the second half, or the last third, much better. That’s what we’re working on now.”

Alonso is realistic about the process: “There are a couple of ideas in motion, but in F1 nothing happens overnight. We need to spend a couple of months with this car. It’s not worth changing a lot if the car is going to change completely in two months.”

A car with fundamental problems — but Alonso still sees light

The AMR26 is struggling on multiple fronts:

But Alonso insists there’s real potential buried underneath.

“There’s huge potential in the car and the engine,” he said Saturday. “We’ve made progress since Bahrain in deployment and understanding drivability issues. We need to fix the vibrations and the power deficit — those are fundamental problems that started badly — but the engineers aren’t sitting around watching TV. They’re working flat‑out. We need to give them time and be patient while we keep competing with this package.”

The good news: the vibrations are no longer damaging the batteries. The bad news: they’re still the biggest limiting factor on race weekends.

“On Friday the car had zero vibrations, and on Saturday they came back. We’ll study the overnight changes to see if something contributed. Since testing, Friday in Japan was an 80% improvement.”

As for the new rear wing and tweaks to the floor, Alonso sees them as diagnostic tools rather than performance upgrades: “These are small pieces we test to confirm whether the problem is what we think it is. They don’t bring performance — they point us in a direction. Everything is working as expected, and there are positive things we’re testing at the factory. But from an idea to the wind tunnel, to CFD, to production… we’re already talking about August.”

“The Suzuka challenge is over”

Alonso also reflected on how the new‑generation F1 cars behave at a track as extreme as Suzuka — and his verdict is blunt.

“The challenge is over. It’s like any other circuit now. I already said the cook could drive the car through Turn 12 in Bahrain. Here, half the team could drive it in Suzuka. High‑speed corners are now just the car’s charging station to maximize power on the straights. Driver skill isn’t needed anymore — you just lift and recharge the battery. There’s no challenge left in high speed.”

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