Carlos Sainz opens up on private Fernando Alonso chat over 2026 setbacks

Carlos Sainz has offered a rare glimpse into a private chat with Fernando Alonso – and neither Spaniard is entirely comfortable with where their team stands heading into F1 2026.

This season, Formula 1 has undergone its technical biggest reset in the sport’s history with new cars and engines on the grid.

Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso discuss 2026 challenges

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For some teams, for various reasons, the changes are bigger than others.

One of those is Aston Martin.

The Silverstone team not only has a new team boss in design guru Adrian Newey, his first-ever foray into that leadership role, but it is also partnering with Honda.

The Japanese engine supplier effectively quit Formula 1 at the end of 2021 but stayed on in a fringe role to run its homologated power unit in conjunction with Red Bull Powertrains until the end of 2025.

Today Honda is back in the sport as power unit manufacturer and Red Bull has its very own Red Bull Powertrains-Ford engine.

But while Red Bull had a successful pre-season, the same cannot be said for Honda, who openly admitted Aston Martin’s final day in Bahrain was undone by a lack of engine parts and battery issues. Instead of laying down the laps, the AMR26 sat in the garage with the engine back on the test bench in Sakura.

Earlier Aston Martin also missed almost three full days of pre-season testing as it was also late to Barcelona, only venturing out of the garage in the final hour of the second day.

Aston Martin wasn’t the only team sidelined for days during testing with Williams not making the Barcelona shakedown following delays in the FW48 programme.

Williams has not gone into much detail about the delay, James Vowles saying the team instead did a “week worth of VTT testing” in what he called the “best I’ve seen us produce here” in Grove.

He did, however, concede that he would “much prefer to be in Barcelona” than running at the team’s factory.

The missed days has left both of Formula 1’s Spanish drivers on the back foot heading to Melbourne for the season-opening grand prix from 6-8 March.

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But without going into details, Sainz says both he and Alonso believe their teams will reset and recover from their respective setbacks.

“I ran into Fernando one day in the paddock and we talked for a good 20 minutes, catching up a bit,” he told Mundo Deportivo, “and well, he’s in a situation a bit similar to mine, which is not ideal, complicated.

“But [he’s] also eager to see what his team is capable of bringing and to see his team’s ability to react.

“In the end, we both depend on nothing more and nothing less than seeing how our teams react to the complicated situation we each find ourselves in, but I also wish him all the best and hope that Aston Martin and Honda improve on what they showed in Bahrain.”

Williams was, however, present for both Bahrain outings where it covered 422 laps followed by 368.

Aston Martin managed 206 and 128 laps.

Despite Aston Martin’s troubles, Alonso is confident the team and Honda will find solutions.

Alonso told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets in Bahrain: “Difficult start, no doubt. Lots of things to be fixed.

“But everyone is working at their 100 per cent capacity, at both factories in the UK and Japan as well, to try to make this period of time as short as possible.”

Asked if the AMR26 is merely suffering from growing pains or whether there is a fundamental flaw, he replied: “I think everything can be fixed, for sure, short and medium term.

“I don’t think there is anything that is impossible to fix, but we need to wait and see.

“We will try to fix everything that we can before Australia and, after that, try to fix as many things as possible in the first couple of races before it’s too late in the championship.

“But no, I’m optimistic. I think there is a solution in place.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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