Alonso warns B-spec AMR26 upgrades cannot erase two-second F1 deficit

Fernando Alonso has played down expectations for Aston Martin’s long-awaited B-spec AMR26, insisting no upgrade package can erase the two-second deficit the team faced at Spa.

The highly anticipated B-spec Aston Martin AMR26 will break cover at the Budapest circuit in Friday’s first free practice, with Aston Martin pinning its hopes for this season on the heavily revised package.

Fernando Alonso tempers Aston Martin AMR26 upgrade expectations

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Aston Martin has endured a torrid F1 2026 season thus far, with Alonso’s point at the Monaco Grand Prix the only highlight.

That elevated the team above Cadillac in the constructors’ championship. Overall, however, Aston Martin has been slower than the newcomers.

Aston Martin last beat a Cadillac driver in qualifying at the Canadian Grand Prix, with the team’s back-of-the-grid streak up to five race weekends.

Alonso and Lance Stroll suffered their worst qualifying last time out in Spa, where they were over two seconds down on the slowest Cadillac driver, Sergio Perez.

Alonso isn’t expecting that deficit to be erased with the new package, despite Valtteri Bottas hearing “rumours” of huge gains.

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“I’m not thinking too much about numbers, positions or something like that, because if we go back to the last five races, I think we had very different gaps to the midfield,” Alonso said.

“We had a more or less consistent gap to pole position, which is unreachable, obviously, at this moment, but there were a couple of tough circuits. I think Silverstone was tough. Spa was one of the toughest.

“I think we had the guy in front of us 2.1 seconds ahead, so there is no package in the world that will give you that amount of time.

“Probably the position would not change if you ran the updated car in Spa one week ago, so that’s how we need to treat it. It will change circuit by circuit.

“Hopefully Budapest is a friendly circuit for us. Power is not the most important point here, which obviously helps.

“We will update the car, but not the engine yet, so we still have something that we need to overcome.

“I’m more interested in understanding the direction of the car, whether we are on a good path and whether we finally unlock the performance.”

The upgraded car is the first stage of a two-step upgrade for Aston Martin, with improvements to the Honda power unit expected to arrive at the Dutch Grand Prix next month.

“I don’t think that it changes anything in the approach that we’ve had so far this year,” he said. “We go to every race trying to maximise what we have in our hands. We’re here to win races and to fight for championships.

“We didn’t start the season that way, and we will not be that way either, because we are just in the process of understanding these regulations and getting onto a good path, let’s say, with the development of the car.

“I think for the first 12 races, all the teams opted for a different strategy, the more conventional one, to bring two or three tenths of a second every two or three races, and then you end up with one second or one and a half seconds by race 10 or race 12.

“We didn’t do that, so we fell a little bit behind everyone else on the grid, and now we will try to catch up all at once.

“But I think it doesn’t change your natural position at the end on Sundays. I’m obviously optimistic.

“I’m very proud of the team and of the job that they’ve done since the Bahrain test, when we understood that we had a problem and we had to fix a few weaknesses on the car. I think this is the first step towards those fixes, but there are more to come.”

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