Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin in ‘survival mode’ at Chinese Grand Prix

This was supposed to be a dream season for Aston Martin.

A sweeping set of regulations changes — the biggest in the long history of Formula 1 — gave Adrian Newey, arguably the greatest designer in the sport, a blank canvas to work with. Factor in the investments made behind the scenes, including a state-of-the-art facility for the team in Silverstone, and 2026 was going to be the year that Lawrence Stroll’s vision truly took shape.

But that dream has gotten off to a rocky start, and the team is in “survival mode” at this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix.

Pre-season testing uncovered substantial problems with the team’s challenger for the 2026 season, and ahead of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix Newey outlined just what the team is facing. A severe vibration in the team’s Honda power units was causing parts to malfunction on the AMR26, with components literally falling off the car. “That vibration into the chassis is causing a few reliability problems, mirrors falling off, tail lights falling off, all that sort of thing, which we are having to address,” noted Newey.

Even worse, the vibration left drivers Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso at risk of significant, and permanent, nerve damage if they ran more than a handful of laps.

“Fernando is of the feeling that he can’t do more than 25 laps consecutively before he will risk permanent nerve damage to his hands,” Newey added at the Australian Grand Prix. “Lance is of the opinion that he can’t do more than 15 laps before that threshold.

“To me I think there’s no point in not being open and honest on our expectations. We are going to have to be very heavily restricted on how many laps we do in the race until we get on top of the source of the vibration and improve the vibration at source.”

Those issues, and a lack of backup components, led Aston Martin to treat the Australian Grand Prix as an additional testing session. Alonso completed just 21 laps, and Stroll 43, and both drivers spent extensive periods of the race in the garage as the team worked on both cars.

Meeting the media ahead of this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix in the FIA Press Conference, Alonso cautioned fans to expect more of the same as Aston Martin tries to work the problem.

“The situation unfortunately didn’t change within four or five days since Melbourne, so yeah, I think it’s going to be another difficult weekend, trying to understand as much as possible on the car and, you know, eventually limit the laps in a couple of the sessions because we are short on parts, and yeah, try to get something positive out of the weekend,” began Alonso.

As for what “something positive” might look like, Alonso indicated that a “normal” weekend would be a positive for the team.

“I think obviously when we can do laps without any issues, I think they are very important laps because even now here with Esteban [Ocon] and Pierre [Gasly], they were not optimised for Australia, and apparently it was the same case for everybody, and they are, I don’t know, maybe ten times ahead of us,” outlined Alonso. “If they completed 1,000 laps since Barcelona test, we completed maybe 100, so we are nine or ten times behind. So, if they are still not perfectly optimised, imagine ourselves.

“We are at square one, so we really need the laps, we really need to be able to practice and to find the window on the car and the chassis side. That will obviously be very important for the weekend, and I will be happy if we leave China with a more or less normal free practice, more or less normal quali, accumulating laps and probably attempting the full race on Sunday, if we are allowed.”

Unfortunately for Aston Martin, what complicates matters is that this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix is the first F1 Sprint race of the 2026 season. While that offers a shorter race on Saturday — and two chances to score points — it also means just one hour of practice before sprint qualifying.

Asked whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, Alonso noted that the team is simply in “survival mode” at the moment.

“I think, yeah, it will not change much to us,“ said Alonso. ”We are in survival mode, so let’s see if we can capitalise on some other issues that may happen in front of us.“

However, despite the tough start for Aston Martin, Alonso noted that the season has not been as tough as us on the outside might expect, both for the team and for the veteran driver personally.

“Less tough than what you think,” said Alonso when asked whether he was in a hard mental place.

“I mean, not ideal. We all want to win. We are 22 drivers this year. One will win, 21 will be in a difficult and tough mental state, because for me to finish third or fifth or 17th, it really doesn’t matter much.

“I was lucky enough and privileged enough to live different eras n Formula 1 and to have fun driving, and eventually super lucky to have competitive cars for half of my career and achieving more than 100 podiums in the category. So now to finish, as I said, in any other position that is not first, for me it’s the same pain and the same struggle,” continued Alonso. “Obviously, we are now in this journey with the team, which is not the ideal start, but it’s the first year of this collaboration between Aston Martin and Honda and we have to go through this moment in time, and I’m ready to help as much as I can.”