F1 Miami delivers Aston Martin first win of 2026: “The car behaves normal now”

Fernando Alonso says the Aston Martin Formula 1 car “behaves like normal now”, as countermeasures implemented by Honda have eliminated vibrations.

Aston Martin has been plagued by vibration issues from its new Honda power unit so far this season, with Fernando Alonso retiring in China due to his hands going numb.

The five-week break after Japan due to the Iran war allowed Honda to work on its power unit with the car at its Sakura base, with countermeasures implemented for the Miami Grand Prix.

While Aston has brought now car upgrades to Miami, Alonso said on Saturday after qualifying that the vibrations were now gone and he’ll have “no issues to finish the race”.

“17th place is one second in front of us. So, still a long way to go,” he said of his session when speaking to the media, including Crash.net.

“But I mean, the reliability and the vibrations are much better than what they’ve been so far.

“So, that’s the main positive of this weekend.

“All the vibration work, let’s say we can tick that box because the car behaves normal now.

“So, no issues to finish the race tomorrow, no reliability concerns.

“In terms of pace, we didn’t bring any parts here. So, probably we’ve fallen behind a little bit extra than the last race.”

Alonso added that curing the vibration problems was the first priority in the development of the Aston Martin, as it would have been “difficult to gain trust in the next steps” without a true fix.

“As long as you don’t understand the problems, you don’t fix one at a time, it’s difficult to gain trust in the next steps into the performance,” he said.

“I think it was a relief to see the vibrations that we measured in Sakura reduced.

“It’s a confirmation here on track.

“But obviously, we are racers, so when we come here and see the situation is the same, and it’s going to be the same for the next few months; it’s going to be an exercise of staying calm altogether.”

Alonso warned that he is not expecting any major car upgrades until after the summer, though Aston has already played down speculation of a ‘B-spec’ upgrade coming for the Belgian Grand Prix.

“Bad surprise” gearbox issues hamper Alonso’s qualifying in Miami

Alonso qualified his car 18th in Q1, and says he struggled with a gearbox issue he’d never experienced before that will be impossible to race with if it’s wet on Sunday.

“I think the biggest problem for me in qualifying was the gearbox,” he explained.

“It was for the very first time, because we didn’t have any problems the rest of the sessions this weekend, but in qualifying it was impossible to drive.

“So, I lost in every braking points, I had no acceleration out of the corners, and the downshifts were all over the place - very random.

“Sometimes I had push, sometimes I had rear locking.

“So, that was a surprise, a bad surprise, in qualy. So, let’s try to understand and fix it for tomorrow. Especially if it rains, I don’t think we can race it with this level of random downshifts.”