Aston Martin yet to solve early-season F1 car weaknesses, says Fernando Alonso
Despite recent upturn in performance, Fernando Alonso is aware of the shortcomings of the 2025 Aston Martin.
Fernando Alonso believes Aston Martin is yet to fix some underlying issues with its Formula 1 car that have plagued its performance since the start of the 2025 season.
The two-time world champion endured a tough start to the season, failing to score a single point in the opening eight rounds while battling an uncompetitive AMR25.
Teammate Lance Stroll began the campaign more strongly with consecutive top-10 finishes in Australia and China, but was soon affected by the same limitations.
With just 14 points on board, the British F1 squad was left eighth in the constructors’ championship last month, only ahead of the struggling Alpine and Sauber teams.
However, a major upgrade package in Imola uplifted its fortunes, allowing Alonso to break inside the points in his home race in Spain before bagging an impressive seventh-place result in Canada last week.
In fact, Alonso was rapid throughout the weekend at Gilles Villeneuve, finishing inside the top five in practice before qualifying on the third row of the grid.
However, despite the last two races showing a clear upward trajectory, the 43-year-old believes Aston Martin still “has work to do” to close the gap to the front runners.
“It gives us a little bit more confidence to push but there are still some weaknesses in the car since the beginning that we still [have] not solved completely,” he said. “Especially on the race pace on Sunday we see the problems.
“Still a lot of work to do, today we led the midfield but the top teams are still quite far away and we need to close that gap.”
Speaking ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix, Alonso shed more light on where the car is falling short and cautioned that some issues may persist through the remainder of the season.
“It’s a combination of a few things. Probably the efficiency is not what we expected on this car," he said.
"The level of downforce we need to run sometimes is higher than what we’d love to. But to have some kind of grip in the corners, we need to sacrifice the straights.
“In qualifying you open the DRS and you’re not penalised too much, but in the race we do see a bit of a handicap.
"There are a couple of ideas to improve this year’s car without compromising time for next year. But there are complications in the 2025 car we’ll have to keep until the end of the year.”
Aston remains eighth in the championship standings, but now trails Haas and Racing Bulls by just six points as the midfield battle intensifies.
