“No doubts”: Alonso ahead of Aston Martin’s make-or-break upgrades
- Mia Wallace
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
Aston Martin has been on the back foot all season long. No new upgrades, DNF’s, and seconds off the pace of the top competitors. Combine that with the fact that they’ve only scored a single point so far during their 2026 campaign, and it all adds up to disaster.
As we enter the eleventh round of the season, Aston Martin is looking to finally start changing the narrative ahead of the summer break. This weekend in Budapest, they bring their first major upgrades since Melbourne, and Aston driver Fernando Alonso seems optimistic about the changes.
“I'm very proud of the team, what they have done to understand the problems since the Bahrain test,” he said during Thursday’s press conference.
“I don't think [the upgrades] change the approach - we go to every race to maximise what we have... I think for the first races, all the teams opted for the conventional strategy to bring two or three tenths per race. And then you end up a second ahead by the 10th race.
“We didn’t do that; we opted to bring it all at once to catch up.”
Confirmation from Alonso that the team took the long-term gain route, electing to fall further and further behind the teams ahead and make one large leap forward over small continuous upgrades.
With that, though, comes the challenge of overcoming a larger performance deficit. Because Aston Martin has held off on upgrading their package for so long, they’ll be on the hunt for far more than a few tenths. In fact, a few seconds is more around the margin they’re looking to gain.
“Hopefully, Budapest is a friendly circuit for us,” Alonso added.
“I’m more into understanding what is the direction of the car and if we unlock the potential.”
Is it too late in the season for Aston Martin to make a move, though? This weekend’s race will surely be a big indicator of that. But even if this season is lost, at least Alonso is feeling good enough about the progress to carry it into 2027.
"I have a pretty clear picture from the team that we will fix all the problems; it just takes time,” he explained.
“I have no doubts that Adrian [Newey] will provide the best car on the grid in time."
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