Fernando Alonso was asked a simple question after the Dutch Grand Prix: does ninth place and two points make him more likely to stay in Formula 1 next year? His answer was one word. “No.”
That is the cleanest summary of where Aston Martin’s most experienced driver stands going into Monza. His contract runs out after Abu Dhabi, and the thing that will settle what happens next is not the car underneath him.
The car is not the question
“For my decision, as I said, it’s not really about the car… it’s more about the regulations,” Alonso said. Then came the line that travelled furthest: “This is not the Formula One we grew up with, and this is not the Formula One that we all want.”
That is a driver reacting to the 2026 rule set rather than to his results. The cars now split their performance roughly evenly between the combustion engine and the electrical side, which means a lap is shaped as much by when energy is harvested and released as by how the car turns. If you want the mechanics of that, we broke it down in ERS Explained. The other half of the change is aerodynamic: the cars switch between low-drag and high-downforce configurations on the move, which we covered in Active Aero Explained.
Alonso is not arguing that the cars are slow. He is saying the job has changed, and that he would like a hand in shaping whatever comes after this rule set instead of simply living inside it.
The chassis answers, the engine does not
The team is not standing still. Aston Martin arrived in Hungary with a B-spec AMR26 carrying sixteen changes, then brought four or five more components to Zandvoort. Honda supplied a power unit update at the same race.
The chassis half of that is working. “I think another step forward, especially on the chassis side,” Alonso said of the Zandvoort package.
The engine half is not. “The drivability was a problem, and the extra power was difficult to fill in Zandvoort,” he said, before adding that “we’re struggling with the downshift again and we’re struggling with the engine braking.” Extra power that a driver cannot use cleanly on corner entry is not extra lap time.
The two points came from a two-stop strategy rather than raw pace, and Alonso did not dress it up: “Obviously, we cannot be happy with just P9, and I think no one is happy in the team.”
That is the awkward shape of Aston Martin’s season. The AMR26 is the first Formula 1 car designed under Adrian Newey, and Newey has been open about the fact that starting the project late was always going to cost the team something. The chassis is beginning to answer. The power unit is the piece still missing, and both have to move if 2027 is going to look different.
Monza will not flatter the Honda
In theory, Monza is where a power unit gets weighed. In practice, Alonso has already set expectations: “I don’t expect Monza to be competitive, but maybe in some other circuits we have another chance.”
That follows logically from what he described in Zandvoort. Monza is the least amount of cornering on the calendar and the largest amount of full throttle, so it rewards straight-line efficiency and clean energy deployment over a very long lap, precisely the area Aston Martin has been struggling with. It also puts a premium on the tow down to the Rettifilo, which is worth more under these rules than it used to be; we explained why in Slipstream Explained.
Everyone at Monza is chasing the same tenths in different ways. McLaren has arrived with a rotating rear wing it calls the H-wing, while Ferrari has already decided which of its two drivers gives the tow.
Krack: a decision in the coming weeks
Aston Martin is not waiting indefinitely. Mike Krack, the team’s chief trackside officer, said during the Dutch Grand Prix weekend that “I think we will see a decision in the coming weeks”, noting that Alonso had pointed to around the summer and that the conversations had been running for “many, many months already”.
The context is hard to ignore. Alonso turns 46 next July and his last Formula 1 win came in 2013. He has spent this season fighting for the lower end of the points, which is exactly the scenario he was asked about when he answered “no”.
Aston Martin does have work for him away from Formula 1 if he wants it, from GT3 racing to the marque’s endurance programme. Alonso has not shut the door on that: “I think that door is not closed, as we saw with Lance doing the GT3 race”, but he was equally clear about where his attention sits right now: “My main focus now is in F1, and that will not change.”
Three things to watch at Monza
Three things will tell you more than the result. First, Aston Martin’s speed trap numbers relative to the other Honda-powered cars. Second, how much lap time Alonso loses in the braking zones at the two chicanes, because that is where the drivability complaint shows up. Third, whether he sounds like a driver planning a 2027 campaign or one closing a chapter.
We will be covering practice, qualifying and the race as they happen in the RNT-Motorsports live blog.
