Alonso May Be the Only Thing Holding Aston Together

Could Aston Martin skip the first race of the season? I'm not saying they will, but after Bahrain, I wouldn't blame them. And you can probably understand why people are even asking or considering that question, because apart from their livery, almost nothing has gone right for this team. And that image of Fernando standing alone in the desert while his car just sat there after another failure, untouchable because of the electrical charge within, it looked uncomfortably close to 2012 all over again. Man, there's a very real situation here where Cadillac could outpace Aston Martin at Melbourne should they turn up. Unless a fix that reportedly has come to Honda's attention comes in time for the Chinese Grand Prix. Now, I'm not saying Cadillac's about to stun the world here and outperform Aston Martin after all of the investment Papa Stroll has put into that team. But considering that during pre-season testing, Cadillac managed to get something out of their car, whereas Aston Martin didn't even come close to getting their program completed, even though they claimed to have done so. Pace almost becomes secondary. It doesn't matter because Aston Martin has got no clue as to what they've actually built. Cadillac does have a clue. And it's really hard to pinpoint exactly which of the team's issues is the biggest cause for concern at the moment. There are too many to choose from at the moment. Although I can easily imagine that a lot of you are pointing towards that statement, well, more like apology post that Honda posted the other day. It's giving me 2023 Mercedes energy. You know, after the Bahrain Grand Prix, right? When Mercedes don't look so hot behind Aston Martin. Ironically, if Honda had to resort to that kind of public addressing, then you know things are bad. And again, it doesn't really seem to be one major issue that is dogging Aston Martin. If that were the case, it would be easier to kind of problem solve. It seems to be a bunch of several failures rolled into one. All happening at the exact same time. The car is late. The mileage is low. Their confidence is really low. The power unit's fragile. The parts pool is thin. The integration is new. The gearbox is new. The resuspension is new. And the team is also trying to learn how to operate as a proper works outfit for the first time. That was what pre-season testing was for them. All capped off at day six of Bahrain testing with Honda announcing they had a battery issue. Now, I know what you're going to be saying. Law, you can't just keep talking about lap counts, because it's really hard to put into perspective how far Aston Martin are behind. Well, I've got you. Or Reddit user f1fan2004's got you. Because they put together a chart. And when you look at it, even Cadillac, who are the new kids on the block trying to show they're a serious operation, have shown steady progress. Only just eclipsed by Williams. Aston, miles off. A huge gulf of lost testing time for one reason or another. And the biggest alarm bell is that they weren't able to ever get a full race run in. I think Alonso only got about 26 laps in terms of the continuous stint on before his car gave out on him. That's one of the basics you get down during testing. So that would have then propagated all of the concerns about whether or not they would even bother in competing in Australia. Because they don't know whether their car can actually take a 300km race distance. They haven't done it yet. The mega campus project is struggling really badly. Whereas Cadillac, they're just getting by smoothly. They're not pretending to be the best team on the grid. They just want to be seen. And so far, we're seeing them and appreciating them being here and taking F1 seriously. Which is exactly why Stefano Domenicali is the happiest bunny on earth right now. And for a team like Aston who really prides themselves on having the best presentation on the grid because they can really make themselves look cool, they really hit rock bottom. So would it be best for all concerned that they just didn't bother showing up at Albert Park or just doing a token run like Arrows did around the French Grand Prix of 2002 before they went belly up? Well, okay. Realistically, they can't. Because the political ramifications would be absolutely brutal. But equally, it would be brutal if they did turn up. So really, they're in a hiding to nowhere right here. Catch 22. Because if you're already short on parts, the last thing you want is a race weekend turning into a high-speed parts shredder. Let's not forget what Williams went through a couple of years ago where they had no spare chassis. So come Australia, Logan Sargent had to sit out the race despite having done nothing wrong. Only for Albon who used his chassis to not score them any points anyway. But the question highlights something important. As of now, mileage is more valuable to Aston than outright pace or parts. You're behind in a way that's really hard to buy back. Sure, they've got themselves a tricked-out wind tunnel. They've got a hugely talented designer and Adrian Newey, some really big-brained engineers. But the mileage that they weren't able to get, the laps they didn't manage to accrue, are the laps that everyone else was managed to get. Williams was able to catch up and pass them considerably. And they've been able to learn more. And Alonso's own takes have been screaming that. And that's something to really pay attention to. I don't need the form of doubt for this one because, clearly, Fernando's in no doubt that things can only get better. This is not like the McLaren-Honda project of 2015. Because he keeps going on to the same thing time and time again. The chassis, which is pretty much one of the big things about a Formula 1 car, can be fixed in his own opinion. Right now, the job for the team is to try and understand the performance gap as well as the reliability toward the power unit side of things. As well as, of course, their brand new gearbox, which is a first for the team. Mike Crack saying that this was an absolute dream for the team to be able to make something in-house. Well, that $9-10 million a year project has turned into a bit of an absolute nightmare, hasn't it? But going back to Fernando, what I'm hearing from him is not somebody performing the last rites on a project. The way I think he's describing it is that it's simply immature. Immature things can mature and go on to become really, really good. Something that's dead in the water can't because, well, it's dead. And we've already seen Fernando acting out when a project is essentially dead. Yeah, Fernando can get pretty morbid in circumstances like that. I've not seen that yet. He's acting like a protector, whereas Lance, he's been sounding more pessimistic, giving more honest driver-facing answers. We all remember his four-second comment, which got many people talking and pointing and laughing at the team. Not at all like Alonso, who speaks more in specific or troubleshooting ideas. And when you think about it, Aston chose the hardest possible season to be half ready. Because the ultimate name of the game in 2026, even though the FIA and Formula One are looking at the rules and jigging things up a little bit, it's all about energy management. And Aston clearly didn't get that memo spot on. But what this essentially means, as well as all of the tweaking they've done to the start procedure, what with that extra blue light to provide an extra few seconds to get the turbos spooled up, it means that everybody's still learning about these new regulations. Aston aren't the only ones figuring things out, but they are very much struggling in this new era of Formula One simply for the lack of valuable information they've been able to accrue. According to that chart that I showed you, they've barely been able to get a smidge over 2,000 kilometers worth of running. Everyone else has gotten at least 4,000, and some even above 6,000 kilometers of testing. Aston Martin, as everyone else is getting smarter, are getting relatively dumber. Being year one of the works project, it does mean your engine integration problems are now your problems. There is no Mercedes customer package to plug in and run while everyone pretends the hard bits are invisible. Papa Stroll can't go running to Toto Wolf and complaining that the power unit and suspension and gearbox they provided are not up to snuff. And I can easily imagine right now that Flavio Briatore and Alpine are looking at all of the maladies of Aston Martin and thinking, well, if you ever look at that, it's the good thing we're not doing that anymore. And if one or more of the major parts of the car are having a really bad time of it, are complaining massively or just giving up the ghost, then it means the entire car is acting like it's got the flu or something like that. It can't run at its full potential, so you can't really get the maximum data input you can possibly achieve. It's like every single time you see a normie driving a Formula 1 car. You remember that clip from Top Gear where Richard Hammond drives a Renault, and he's always really that nervy about going into corners, the brakes seize up because they're not up to temperature. Nothing in a Formula 1 car can really go full health unless you give it the beans. You have to run it at maximum or close to it as possible. Right now, Aston Martin can't do that, so therefore, no wonder they're three, four, four and a half seconds off the pace. I don't think they're in 107% territory yet. We'll just have to wait and see, depending on the different circuits that we go to. And Aston's own leadership announcement basically telegraphed this months ago when they moved Andy Cowell into a strategy role then putting Newey into the team principal role to guide technical and trackside operations. And when that happened, I thought they were confusing, but logical, you're putting Andy in a role which is best suited to him, but Newey's is odd. He's arguably the greatest designer in F1 history, but running an entire operation during the most complex regulation reset in history of F1? That's, uh, different. Because the whole thing about being the best designer is getting the best design possible, whereas as a team principal, considering all the things that are coming onto your desk every single day, you have to find the process which is good enough. You have to make compromises. Now him being in full charge of the day-to-day running of that team, as well as being the managing technical partner of it? Well, I can easily imagine that several departments are figuring out the full wrath of Adrian Newey's search for perfection. There is going to be a huge amount of attrition, or a lot of very cross, tired, and really grumpy individuals. Or finding out how low Adrian's tolerance is to infection. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. And once again, there have been reports about Adrian Newey having a fallout with a certain individual, this time being Andy Cowell, having differences as to the design direction of the 2026 car. Is it going to be aero-related, or is it going to be engine-related? Well, it turns out that maybe Andy Cowell might have had a point, because it is all about energy management, and he was at the head of Mercedes' high-performance powertrains back in the day, so he does know how to succeed. This is not going to be the first time that somebody leaves, and people are going, Newey? Newey. And it would also not surprise me, oh, okay, I will get the spanner out for this bit, is if nobody wanted the job of team principal if Adrian Newey was going to be the second-in-command to Papa Stroll. Given that circumstance, the only person for the job available was Adrian, to put all of the departments into one, to search for ultimate perfection, to maybe get them out of this mess. Adrian said for himself that the team was four months behind in development for the 2026 car, because he couldn't arrive until the beginning of March, and then Honda admits that they were 18 months behind due to all of their to-ing and fro-ing after pulling out of F1 in 2020 to only then come back round again for the new regulations. It's all a case of timings, and things not coming up to scratch at the precise moment you wanted them to. This could work absolutely brilliantly, but later, not right now. It's all a mess right now. Right now, it seems like Adrian's not going to be suffering fools lightly, and Christian Horner's old chaos line about Newey managing people, it really comes back to the fore. But the more interesting point is that Aston may have accepted this chaos on purpose, because they thought slow consensus would be worse, as in, at least something is getting done, there seems to be a plan. And then, on the final day of testing, to just top it all off, which seemed to be the team's worst, there was a bit of news regarding naming rights and the like. The car company side of things, Aston Martin and Lagonda, selling the F1 naming rights of itself to AMRGP Holdings, that's the company that actually runs the F1 team, for 50 million pounds. All in a bid to bring some cash towards the beleaguering car company to try and pay off some of its debts, which are growing massively. And this is not long after them selling off their stake in the Formula 1 team to do the same thing. So, that was around 140 million dollars, I think, it was certainly nine figures. So, those nine figures may have already turned to vapour. They're just burning cash with this debt! So yeah, on the surface, it very much looked desperate, but maybe there was some logic behind all of this, because this wasn't a cut-and-dry, oh, we'll just give you the names and we won't have any say whatsoever, because we just want to survive in general. Because the team already had the naming rights and the security to use the Aston Martin brand until 2055 or something like that. The reason why we heard, means that the deal's only been crystallised, as in, it's not going to go away, unless the original Aston Martin Lagonda brand says, oh, okay, that new owner? Yeah, yeah, we don't like them. You can't use our name, matey boy, because there could be a reality where Papa Stroll may want to sell up, he may want to retire, he might want to move on to pastures new, he might want to focus on the car company itself and leave the team to somebody else, some other investors. We might have a situation here, where Aston Martin Formula 1 team could still exist without Papa Stroll in charge. So in pure naming rights terms, yeah, this might be a slightly cleaner exit for Papa Stroll should he wish to leave. And yes, the timing of this announcement is very, very unhelpful, because it came out at a time when they were really bad at testing, and then we get that, this providing a little bit of extra doubt about the brand's security and involvement in Formula 1. It's just screaming, no, everything's fine! Distraction, distraction, distraction. The structure does allow for the F1 team's identity to retain itself if the current shareholding pattern seems to drift away, but it also says the F1 team can't freely give away the rights to the name without permission from the company itself, and that a change of control involving a competitor or unacceptable party triggers some protection. So say, for example, if Aramco or the Saudi Public Investment Fund decided to up the ante and buy out the team, yet keep the Aston Martin name for familiarity's sake or to milk the brand, Lagonda would not be powerless to bend over. They have created a path where the F1 side of the business can outlive the exact current ownership mix. It basically means that the F1 team is now even more separate to the car company, so if the car company goes down, it's not going to drag the F1 team with it. And it also may mean the Stroll family doesn't have to necessarily be tied to the F1 team itself. So if Papa Stroll did want to call it a day for any reason, any reason at all, the F1 team would not be affected, or at least it would be less affected. Having said that though, everything is now starting to make sense. Very grim sense, admittedly. Because what with the final day of testing, the newie stuff, the cowl stuff, the naming rights stuff, it all sounds chaotic because it is. It's a stress fracture of the same project. The car company needs serious cash to prevent itself from going under. The F1 team needs integration of its new power unit as well as getting back some of that mileage. So it wouldn't surprise me that the next few races will just be extended test sessions. And the brand may need protection in case there are any hostile bids circling that may wish to make the most out of that name. So, you know, I'm talking about a certain Christian Horner maybe, which they had rebuffed in the past, or maybe somebody else that they don't like. And all those pressures occurred en masse in the last couple of weeks, so no wonder everybody's thinking that indeed Lance was right, the sky is falling within Team Silverstone. Because the team and car are dealing with organizational, technical and financial struggles all at once. So, yeah, Papa Stroll's dream of having a Ferrari-like entity where the prestige of the brand and the success on the track is enough to pay for itself in advertising, meaning you don't have to do conventional commercials. Yeah, that's now a stillborn dream, my friend. You are not as enduring as Ferrari. But there is some good news to be had here. Yes, I am being serious, is that the concept of the car itself, the AMR26, it isn't a complete dud because Fernando still believes in it. It's been my opinion for a while now, since we saw the difficulties of the AMR26 unfold in Barcelona, that there is some potential for this car to actually end up with a platform which is ultimately good. It just might take a while. It may not even happen this year. And again, given that the team were months behind development when Newey turned up, they had to make some tough changes to bake in elements of the car now, like maybe the bodywork, because that car looked too developed to suck for forever, but it might not be able to be maximized yet. And Alonso's comments recently do give me hope. They're not to do with faking optimism. He's been specific with what he said, that the missing piece is just unlocking the power unit's performance. And then we got Pedro de la Rosa rocking up to the plate in Bahrain, which, by the way, he still holds the track record for. And he's just been saying the same thing as Fernando, that it's going to take a long time and they've got a lot of work to do to fix issues, but they have found out what they are and they will do everything in their power to fix them. And they do have the resources, so they might be able to troubleshoot things and get to where they want to be in the not-too-distant future. But it's all come at the same time, which is why it looks so catastrophic. And it helps that Honda are not in denial, that they know exactly what's wrong with this power unit and they will do something to come up with a fix for it. And they decided to just not tempt any more fate, not burn out through another part, and then really put their Australian participation in doubt and just go back to just making more parts and figuring out the problem, so that maybe by the Chinese Grand Prix, they might have a car which is slightly more representative. And that statement openly said that they've still got a lot to learn about energy management. They're no longer able to lean on them mastering the MGU-H, which many believe to be their forte, whilst it was around in 2025 and prior to that of the turbo hybrid era. And that level of honesty from Honda is ugly but healthy. It does mean a rebuild is possible because the engineers are not wasting time pretending everything is fine. And it does make me wonder if Papa Stroll has had to face some really unwelcome but hard truth recently that can't be explained away or sugarcoated. That this is the reality of being a works team. You are going to have some issues that you can't blame other manufacturers for. That would explain why he looked very morose at the Tokyo Motor Show. Yes, there is also Japanese corporate convention to consider, which helped mask it until we saw it in Barcelona and Bahrain, but the reality is that Lawrence Stroll has been slapped across the face multiple times and being told, hey, wake up. This is the reality that you wanted for the last two and a half years. You can't wheel out Mike Crack and be delusional. Aston Martin can't PR their way out of this mess. They have to tackle this problem head on and just be honest about it. So can they recover over the course of a season? Well, McLaren went from the slowest car to podium regulars in less than a single season. So a sudden turnaround can happen provided they have a plan. The shape of the recovery is critical. Fairy tale version, the cleanest version would simply be Honda comes up with that patch for Shanghai and then all is rosy. They're back to where they were at least in 2025, you know, where Alonso can at least get the car into Q3 and bag some decent points, meaning they just continue from where they left off and then the only way is up. We all want to see that, but they're probably going to be spending the flyaway seasons where sourcing out upgrades will be limited and just trying to stabilize the systems, get that engine more reliable and just figure out what exactly they have with that car and with that platform to get to know the actual machine before they can start pushing said machine. It won't be pretty, but it's absolutely necessary. They are going to have to deal with all of the backlashes, the scorn, the hate from online. They're just going to have to grin and absolutely dare it. If they can do that, then it will certainly unlock many things that were not available to them in testing because they just wanted to get the car working at all. Get some race distances under their belt and they can realize where the car is good and where the car is not so good and therefore try and optimize the entire package. That's something you can only figure out when you do proper race runs, stints and distances. And most importantly, restore confidence because they don't have a lot of confidence right now because, well, they're at the start of this journey. They need to get to the end point. I can imagine there's a lot of worry going on around that team because, again, they were only able to get 26 laps out of that car in one go before the entire thing combusted and ate itself. And what these regulations have shown us is that the ones that are able to learn the fastest will be the ones to see the most success. And the ones that are able to have the headspace to innovate will be the ones who will win out this championship. Ferrari, with what they've been bringing to the table in testing, have just shown us that they are really ready for this challenge. And Aston, they could be ready in 2027, but they certainly dropped the ball here, allowing many of the other teams around them in the midfield to gain an advantage. Even Williams has been able to eclipse them, and they didn't even show up for the shakedown at all. But none of that means that Aston Martin's ceiling is the lowest out of any other team. Theirs could be one of the highest, in fact. What we have definitely seen, though, is that their floor is one of the lowest on the grid. They just have to jump even higher than anyone else. I'll wind things up now by saying that what we saw in Bahrain, it's not a case of that the Aston Martin project is doomed to failure. It just shows the absolute struggle they've got to do to try and make the most of their reality of being a works team. Being a works team can have its benefits, but it can also have its pitfalls, which they are now finding out for themselves, because there are far fewer people and parts to point the finger at and going, well, it's their fault. They're also trying to do too many hard things at once whilst preparing the team to become more independent on the long term. In other words, this might not be a collapse, but more of a visible cost of transformation. Even more visible than that of Williams, who chose to have that initial pain behind closed doors. From the outside, it may look chaotic, but from the inside, it may feel necessary. It could still fail though. F1 has buried plenty of clever plans, including Toyota's first go around. It would explain though all of the mixed signals that we've had recently about this team perfectly, as in we don't know where they are. The team doesn't know where their car is, but there is still some hope for the future once they're able to correct some things. But frankly, given what they've had to deal with, they really should stop thinking about trying to hire the big name drivers like Charles Leclerc or Max Verstappen. Yes, I know Adrian said that they're not thinking that for 2027, but if they were thinking that to make the most of Charles being disillusioned of Ferrari, they've got another thing coming. Their main mission for next year is to preserve Fernando Alonso. They need to keep Fernando. If they lost Alonso at this important moment, if he announces his retirement this year, then I think that could be easily one of the biggest blows the team's had to endure the last few months. He's been a keystone of that project, really keeping morale up as best as he possibly can, dragging last year's car to places where they didn't expect it to be, whereas with Lance, he was down near the bottom all the time. He's the guy who's fallen out of Q1 the most out of any driver in Formula 1 history. He's not the one to lead the charge right now in the team's biggest crisis, Team Silverstone's biggest crisis. I don't recall Jordan being this low in the pecking order. There was always someone below them. Right now, Aston Martin are being troubled for being the worst team, and they're at their biggest ever. And I can't imagine the Canadian billionaire's son has actually won the hearts of many by basically admitting their disadvantage to the competition in public. And it also tells me that Honda and this team will absolutely bend over backwards to give Alonso a chance of win number 33 with them wearing green overalls. Yeah, I can't imagine Lance getting the same fervor, honestly. But I can imagine you fervently clicking this video over here to get another dose of the ladder man's yapping since you've made it this far. But I'll see you over there anyway.