Alonso weighs in on new Aston Martin upgrades ahead of Hungarian Grand Prix

Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso has weighed in on the new upgrades the Silverstone-based team are bringing to their car ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix, claiming they will not be fighting for race wins or championships.

Feature image credit: Pirelli

The 2026 regulations have been a learning curve for many teams up and down the paddock, but it has been most so for Aston Martin, who embarked on a troublesome season from the get-go.

Fast-forward to Belgium last weekend; the two Astons qualified over four seconds behind the pacesetters of Q1, finishing on the back row in qualifying, before penalties were applied, with their closest rivals of Q1 over two seconds ahead of them.

However, this weekend, in Hungary, Aston Martin are set to bring a significantly upgraded car in a bid to catch up to the rest of the pack.

Despite a new car to drive, Alonso has said the team will remain outside the fight for race wins as they continue to rebuild, but the two-time world champion remains optimistic about the new upgrades. Speaking of the upgraded car, Alonso said:

“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.

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“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.”

Their car was expected to hold the potential of being a front-runner in the championship, having been designed by engineers and the legendary car designer, Adrian Newey. However, the team quickly fell flat and ground itself into the dirt with trouble, gaining headlines for the wrong reasons before the season even began.

During pre-season testing, the team unveiled their championship contender, and it spun heads in its integration of the regulations, with Mercedes’ championship contender, George Russell, claiming the car looked ‘pretty spectacular.’

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The team had limited running in Bahrain, spending most of the tests inside their garage, fixing problems with their power units, after becoming a works team with Honda powering their machines.

From then on, the team has struggled all season, just scraping through to score a point in Monaco, a circuit where overtaking is notoriously difficult.

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Kamron Kent

Hi, I’m Kamron. I created ApexMotorsports.co.uk in the dying embers of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship. It allowed me freedom to write whatever I wanted to write about which was all things motorsports, my passion.

I have put a lot of effort in over the years to keep this website in its best shape and I’ve loved seeing the brand grow consistently, month-on-month, year-on-year. My ambition is to keep watching this brand grow into a primary outlet of news for all things motorsports whilst fueling my desire to pursue a career in sports journalism, specialising in motorsports.

Kamron Kent

Hi, I'm Kamron. I created ApexMotorsports.co.uk in the dying embers of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship. It allowed me freedom to write whatever I wanted to write about which was all things motorsports, my passion. I have put a lot of effort in over the years to keep this website in its best shape and I've loved seeing the brand grow consistently, month-on-month, year-on-year. My ambition is to keep watching this brand grow into a primary outlet of news for all things motorsports whilst fueling my desire to pursue a career in sports journalism, specialising in motorsports.