Alonso, what are you doing?
Fernando Alonso‘s 2026 is not going at all as the Spaniard hoped. The two-time world champion accepted the challenge of Aston Martin with the clear intent of racing “defensively” to then have a top team in this championship. Desires that seemed confirmed by the major recruitment campaign in the technical department, led by Adrian Newey. Reality, however, has spectacularly rejected the dreams of glory of Lawrence Stroll and the Spaniard. And now, with a contract expiring at the end of the season, what will Alonso do?
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As we reported days ago, Aston Martin remains plan A. But…it practically has to present a B car. And it must be a convincing car. This interpretation is also confirmed by the French publication AUTOHebdo, which presents the image of an Alonso at a crossroads: staying at Aston Martin, retiring, or going to Alpine.
Everything depends on how fast and, above all, effective Newey’s corrections to the initial project will be. Alonso, a month ago, admitted that the car would remain more or less the same until after the summer, and therefore framed race 14 (the home GP in Madrid on September 13) as a hypothesis to see improvements on the Aston Martin. In recent weeks, however, the hypothesis of Spa (July 19) has emerged as the stage to see a new AMR26. And, at this point, it is not excluded that Alonso himself pushed to get the updates as soon as possible, also to understand what to do in 2027.
Certainly, they will have to be immediately impactful changes, practically revolutionary, because currently the AMR26 suffers from a 4″ gap from the top, and even in Catalonia it took 1″ from the Cadillac. In these three months, however, the competition will not stand still. And so Aston Martin’s efforts, even if updates are brought forward, might be useless in order to keep Alonso in the team. If the Spaniard, from track feedback or the simulator, understood that even version B leads nowhere, he would prefer retirement to a 2027 as a non-paying spectator. Unless, of course, the Alpine hypothesis materializes, a team that has grown compared to a terrible 2025, ambitious (confirmed by the agreement with Gucci) and which above all has the Mercedes power unit: a scenario that French colleagues currently define as “improbable”, but if there is one person for whom Alonso would do something crazy, the last gamble of his career, that is Flavio Briatore.
