It’s been a difficult start to the 2025 season for the Aston Martin Formula 1 team, and especially for Fernando Alonso.
The Spaniard crashed in the rain in Australia and then retired early in China with a brake issue. In Suzuka he logged 11th – a respectable result given that all 20 cars finished and there was little passing – but this season still represents his worst opening three races since the McLaren-Honda days in 2017.
In Bahrain he will start in P13, although realistically he would have been 15th at best had Esteban Ocon not crashed and Nico Hulkenberg been penalised for track limits. In addition the late penalty for the Sauber driver impacted Alex Albon, who would potentially have denied Alonso a slot in Q2.
At the end of the session Alonso said that the performance was “maximised” and thanked the team, acknowledging that 13th was better than had been anticipated.
The team’s current form is far removed from 2023, when he was on the podium three times in the first three races.
“I won three times here,” he said when I asked about his session. “So yeah, to be P13 is not the result that I wish or I dreamed, but at the same time, we have to accept the situation and where we are in terms of pace.
“We didn’t show the pace the whole weekend, all the free practices have been difficult and so on.
“To be at the end P13 is probably the best we could, so happy for that, happy for the team that we still work on, even on the difficult times, we never give up and this kind of thing.
“Let’s see tomorrow in the race, but points could be close to us if we do a good tyre management, and a good strategy and all these kind of things.
“So we will do our best. It’s a challenging for sure race for us, with maybe not such a great pace, but taking care of the tyres, fast cars behind us, so I’m looking forward.”
He remains upbeat about the prospects of turning the situation around.
“It’s one of those seasons where the challenge is welcome. Today you try to do the best you can. You start P13 tomorrow. Maybe it was difficult to guess P13 this morning, as it is difficult to guess points tomorrow.
“But what if we achieve the points? It’s a small victory. For us, every step we can do, and every understanding of the car, improvement of the car.
“The team is working day and night here, especially and under these extreme conditions. And they are not giving up. I will not give up. And I will be the first to show that.”
Just making Q2 in Bahrain was a big challenge, and ultimately Alonso had little chance to make any further progress.
“It was that fine line that we didn’t know if Q2 was possible,” he said. “And we had three new set of softs available for qualifying, and we threw all three in Q1 because we were not sure that Q2 was in reach.
“So then eventually when you go into Q2 I only had scrubbed sets for Q2, that’s the downside of it. But as I said, we are not giving up.
“We show every practice, every qualifying, every race, that we are attacking, and we are aggressive on the strategy and on decisions, and we are looking forward some upgrades on the car, and some performance coming from the factory. And we encourage everyone to do their maximum.”
Alonso sat out FP1 for reserve driver Felipe Drugovich, and also missed some laps in FP2 with a steering issue. However he didn’t want to use a lack of track time as an excuse.
“It was not really that bad yesterday. We probably felt the car in the window ready, but on the first three races, probably the low-speed content was our weakness on the car, in the package.
“Bahrain is all about low-speed. So we expected a tough weekend, and unfortunately we confirmed it yesterday.”
Adam Cooper F1 