Fernando Alonso now finds himself at Aston Martin in a situation very similar to the one he experienced during the McLaren-Honda era, but this time the Spanish veteran is trying to approach it with a more philosophical mindset.
As the most experienced driver in the history of Formula 1, Fernando Alonso has witnessed virtually everything the sport can offer: the early races with Minardi, a second-tier team; the triumphs and the controversy of “Crashgate” at Renault; the destructive rivalry with his teammate at McLaren; and the ultimately unsuccessful attempts to win another world title with Ferrari.
The Spanish veteran’s second stint at McLaren was marked by the disastrous revival of the legendary partnership between the Woking-based team and Honda, a collaboration that had once produced iconic success with Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna between the late 1980s and the early 1990s.
The Japanese manufacturer returned to Formula 1 one year after the introduction of the new engine regulations in 2014 and struggled both in terms of performance and reliability. Combined with a long series of grid penalties, the relationship between McLaren and Honda quickly deteriorated, and both parties went their separate ways at the end of the 2017 season, with the Woking team opting to switch to Renault engines.
After humiliating Honda on its home soil with the now famous “GP2 engine” message delivered over team radio during the 2015 Japanese Grand Prix, few expected Alonso to ever work again with the Japanese brand.
Yet the two-time world champion’s winding professional journey eventually brought him back to Honda. A chain reaction of events began with the Japanese company’s decision to leave Formula 1 in October 2020, unaware that it was on the verge of championship success. This led to Red Bull choosing to develop its own power unit in collaboration with Ford, followed by Honda’s later return to Formula 1, and finally Aston Martin’s decision to abandon its status as a Mercedes customer team in favor of a factory partnership with the Japanese manufacturer.
A decade later, history appears to be repeating itself, as the Aston Martin AMR26 designed by Adrian Newey is currently hindered by a Honda engine whose vibrations are damaging battery after battery, even raising concerns about driver safety.
Team owner Lawrence Stroll has invested enormous sums into the Silverstone-based squad in an effort to transform it into a race-winning operation, or at least a genuine championship contender. However, the third Formula 1 world title that Alonso has been chasing for the past twenty years now appears increasingly distant, especially considering that the Spaniard will turn 45 this summer.
How difficult is the current situation for Alonso?
“Less difficult than people might think,” he replied during Thursday’s press conference.
“I mean, it’s not ideal. We all want to win. This year there are 22 drivers on the grid. One will win, and 21 will find themselves in a mentally tough and difficult situation, because for me finishing third, fifth or seventeenth doesn’t really make much difference.”
“I’ve had the luck and the privilege of living through several eras in Formula 1 and enjoying driving, and in the end I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have had competitive cars for about half of my career and to reach more than 100 podiums. So now, as I said, finishing in any position other than first brings the same pain and the same effort for me.”
“Obviously now we are on this journey with the team, which isn’t the ideal start, but it is the first year of this collaboration between Aston Martin and Honda and we need to get through this moment. And I am ready to help as much as possible.”
Alonso obviously cannot ignore the parallels with the McLaren-Honda era and, looking back, he once again approaches the subject with a philosophical perspective.
“I think I can see things from a different perspective now and with a different maturity, but I don’t think that 10 years ago the situation was, once again, that dramatic,” he said. “This is Formula 1, a sport that is very media-driven. When you win a few championships racing only against your teammate, you are a god, and then when you are fighting and going through a difficult period, that also gets magnified.”
“For me, the biggest surprise in recent years has been thinking that 10 years ago McLaren, Stoffel (Vandoorne), Jenson (Button) and I – because people always seem to remember only Fernando, but I think Jenson, Stoffel and McLaren all felt the same way – that project, that power unit, simply wasn’t mature enough when we started, something that now everyone seems to understand.”
“But two or three years ago it seemed like I was crazy, ten years ago, for criticizing it or saying things like that. I think those were simply frustrations expressed over the radio, which were there, and as a two-time world champion and a competitive driver I wasn’t happy with the situation. Damn it, should I have been happy and applauding inside the car for the work that had been done?”
“So now I think that when everyone looks at that situation from the outside and sees the current situation, I believe they are a bit friendlier toward us and understand the problems better. And now what I can do within the team is simply work harder, try to help Honda as much as possible, allocating some of Aston Martin’s resources to the engine, the power unit, the vibration issues and the implementation problems.”
“We are a team. As I said, it is a difficult start, but I hope it won’t last too long.”
On Friday at the Chinese Grand Prix there were no major signs of improvement in terms of performance, although Aston Martin managed to reduce the gap to the midfield teams. Alonso qualified 0.82 seconds behind the fastest Williams and 0.99 seconds away from the time required to enter Q2.
Performance, however, is not yet Aston Martin’s main priority, especially because the team must still limit mileage due to the lack of spare batteries available.
When asked on Thursday what a positive weekend would look like, Alonso replied: “I think obviously that when we manage to complete laps without problems, those are very important laps because if the others have completed 1,000 laps since the Barcelona tests, we have maybe done 100, so we are nine or ten times behind. So if they are not yet perfectly optimized, imagine us.”
“We have started again from zero, so we really need to complete as many laps as possible. We absolutely need to test and find the right balance between the car and the chassis. That will obviously be very important for the weekend, and I will be happy if we manage to leave China after completing more or less normal practice sessions, more or less normal qualifying, accumulating laps and maybe trying to finish the entire race on Sunday, if we are allowed to.”
A barely disguised reference to the AMR26’s inability to complete the Australian Grand Prix due to the previously mentioned concerns.
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