Alonso understands Verstappen's comments, but feels they have to get on with it

Fernando Alonso dissects the F1 2026 regs as he feels they have to get on with it, plus addresses claims of Aston Martin being far off.

After Red Bull’s Verstappen called the new F1 2026 regulation as ‘Formula E on steroids’, the Dutchman found support from some drivers, which includes Aston Martin’s Alonso. The Spaniard, though, cautioned everyone to wait for three-four races to understand how the racing will be.

He agrees that the energy saving in corners for the next straight is something that a driver wouldn’t want to do, but he equates it with lack of downforce that cars had against Red Bull in the previous regulations. He feels every regulation has its set of difficulties, which one may not like.

At the end of the day, they have to get on with it and win. In this case, Alonso agrees that the best manager will likely win races in F1 2026. On Aston Martin’s performance, the Spaniard backed teammate Lance Stroll’s comments about the four to five seconds off situation.

Due to the difficulties in getting the mileage, Aston Martin finds itself long way off its rivals. They are still running a base car to understand that every part works as it is desired. Having missed shakedown and filming days, the team never got the chance to fine tune the gremlins.

They spent the whole Bahrain test in doing so. This has set them back. He acknowledged that they are still understand the Honda power unit, but he has faith on Adrian Newey’s design on the chassis side. Considering that they have to build the gearbox even, it is brand new situation for all of them.

Regs, Max Verstappen’s say -

Alonso: “Yeah, difficult. I don’t know, we need to wait a couple of races to see how these regs work when we are all together and how racing becomes. Definitely on the pure driving, I said last week at the car launch that for me the late 90s and the early 2000s will be unbeatable in terms of driving adrenaline and pure skills from a driver’s point of view, because you wanted to drive fast on the corners and find the limits of the car. Here in Bahrain has been historically 10-12, a very challenging corner, so you used to choose your downforce level to go 10-12 just flat, so you remove downforce until you are in 10-12 just flat with new tyres and then in the race. So it was a driver’s skill, decisive factor to go fast in a lap time. Now in 10-12 we are like 50 kph slower, because we don’t want to waste energy there and we want to have it all on the straights. So to do 10-12 instead of 260 at 200, you can drive the car, the chef can drive the car in 10-12 at that speed, but you don’t want to waste energy, because you want to have it on the straights. So I understand Max’s comments, because from a driver you would like to make difference in the corner, driving those 5 kph faster, but now you are dictated by how much energy your engine will have on the next straight. But at the same time this is Formula 1 and it has been always like that. Now is the energy, last year or two years ago when he won all the races, it was the downforce. He could go in the corners at 280 and we could go in the corners at 250, because we didn’t have the downforce. So at the end of the day this is Formula 1, we close the visor, we go and this is the same motor racing. Sometimes we go to the rental car here in Bahrain, incredible circuit by the way, and you have a lot of fun with a rental car. So we still love motor racing, we still love competing and for the regs I understand there is less input by the driving skills, but I think after 3 or 4 races maybe we have a better idea. Probably the best energy is rewarded.”

Where Aston Martin is at -

Alonso: “Yeah, I mean definitely we are not in the position we wanted to be. We started on the back foot, missing Barcelona was a big thing, because it was not only missing the Barcelona test, it was also missing the filming days before. Some people ran the car on the 9th of January, so now they’ve been one month analysing data and solving problems, this sensor here, that temperature there, whatever. We didn’t run in Barcelona, we didn’t have any filming day before Barcelona or before here, and now for us it’s really the first test here in Bahrain. So we are finding small issues here and there every single run, and this is affecting a bit the programme. When you are not running clean, run after run, it’s not really progressing the setup. If we have a programme of testing three different stiffness on the suspension, we do one run and then something appears on data, we need to look or change the sensor, we go back again, but it’s one hour after, so the track is different. So for us, we are finding limitations also on unlocking performance, because we don’t run continuously, but maybe the other teams, they found these difficulties on the filming days or in Barcelona the first couple of days, and we are finding them now, unfortunately. No, yes and no, I think it is one of them, but we cannot forget that for us it’s the very first time we are building the gearbox in the history of the team, the very first time, so I don’t know, it is a challenge and we need to get better, we need to have more info, very first time as we build the gearbox, we build the differential, the clutch, this kind of thing, so when we run there and maybe some of the downshifts are a little bit harsh or whatever, we come back, we change a couple of settings, we test again, you know, we used to have Mercedes engine and gearbox with all the settings done, you know, and for us now it’s all new, so I think it’s needed the time that we are having now, to improve this.”

Still faith -

Alonso: “Yeah, I think so, I think on the, especially on the chassis side, you know, the power units, it’s a little bit more difficult because we don’t have, you know, the good understanding yet on the regulations and what is needed, but on the chassis side there is no question mark on that, after 30 plus years of Adrian dominating the sport, it’s not that he will forget everything in one year and I don’t know where we are now in terms of chassis and grip level, but even if we are not at 100 now, we will be at 100 soon because we will fix any problem. On the power unit, I think we need to give time and understand where we are and if we are behind, get better as soon as possible.”

Stroll’s comments -

Alonso: “I don’t know, difficult to know, I think Lance said that because in Barcelona we were four and a half and in the first two days we were like four and a half or five, so it seemed like a trend in the last three days, but I don’t know, I did a lap yesterday that I went off in Turn 4 and then from that point to the finish line I improved eight tenths, so it’s just to give you the number of errors that there are in every lap we are doing now. There are laps that are eight tenths up and down by changing one setting, so it’s not that we need to find two tenths when we optimise, maybe we unlock seconds when we optimise everything, so let’s hope next week we have a better picture, as I said, we are realistic, we will not be the fastest in Melbourne, we started on the slow side and on the back foot, but difficult to guess exactly where.”

Here’s F1 stats from first Bahrain test

Here’s what Lance Stroll said

Here’s what was said after Day 1

Here’s what was said after Day 2

Here’s what said after Day 3

Here’s Adrian Newey on delay

Here’s Lewis Hamilton on the car

Here’s Max Verstappen on the car

Here’s Lando Norris, Sergio Perez on the car