Alonso jokes Aston Martin losing out in F1’s ‘battery world championship’

Aston Martin may be pretty handy at F1 2026 race starts, but, Fernando Alonso quipped that the team is not so competitive when the “battery world championship” racing gets going.

Alonso’s comments follow scathing criticism from Max Verstappen towards the F1 2026 rules, which the Dutchman called – with far less sarcasm – a “joke”.

Fernando Alonso jokes about ‘battery world championship’ under F1 2026 rules

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Aston Martin and Honda has endured a troubled beginning to its Formula 1 partnership.

One area which is firing on all cylinders, though, is race starts.

Like at the season opener in Australia, Alonso again found himself making early progress off the line in China.

“Yeah, the starts are fun. The same as in Australia, the car seems to start really well,” Alonso confirmed to the media.

“On lap one, it’s true that we all have the same level of battery, which is full.”

Unfortunately for Alonso and Aston Martin, then comes the battle to hold position after that early progress, which has proved a very hard one to win across the opening couple of rounds.

That led to Alonso landing a cheeky quip over the F1 2026 regulations, with energy management having become a critical factor behind performance and overtaking.

Alonso, at one point, could be seen waving to Sergio Perez as the Cadillac breezed past him down the Shanghai back straight. The moment was captured via Alonso’s AMR26 onboard camera, but not picked up by the world feed.

“Then, we enter in this battery world championship, and in that, we are not as good as the others.”

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Aston Martin’s Chinese GP ultimately ended in a double DNF. Lance Stroll retired on Lap 10 with a suspected battery issue.

For Alonso, he managed 33 laps, a new milestone for Aston Martin in F1 2026, before retiring due to discomfort from engine vibrations.

Aston Martin’s chief trackside officer Mike Krack confirmed that there were some “additional countermeasures” in place for those vibrations at the Chinese GP, compared to Melbourne.

The “work is continual”, however, and it is so “in all areas”.

He added: “I have to say we have not had any other issues related to that – other than the driver stopping the race – but we have not had, you know, bits falling off or anything, which can happen as well.

“So I think from that point of view, we need to keep working. We need to increase the reliability of the whole package. And then we need to work on the performance as well.”

Aston Martin declared progress in China, including when it comes to understanding that topic of energy usage which Alonso had sarcastically referenced.

“I think you will probably be laughing if I say we have made progress, because today it didn’t look like massive progress,” Krack stated, “but for example, we have never done so many laps.

“On the energy side, it is something that I think every team will confirm, that you discover new things by running alone, but you also discover things when you run with others.

“We’ve seen things yesterday, when we were in the Sprint with cars together on Lap 1, on a restart after a pit-stop. So there is a huge amount of things that you learn.

“Also you find bugs, to be honest, you find issues where you think, ‘Why did that happen now?’ And you work through it, and then you realise this kind of setting, of this part of the regulations, that made this happen, and you know for the next time.

“So from that point of view, it is important to run, it is important to accumulate knowledge.

“And it’s not only on the energy, we have also a different tyre generation that is behaving differently. So all these things, if you are in the garage, you will never find out.”

Next up is Honda’s home race, the Japanese Grand Prix.

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