Fernando Alonso is patient, that’s undeniable.
The Spanish veteran has failed to take a single grand prix victory in his last 225 entries. His second and latest Formula 1 world title was nearly two decades ago.
And yet, he’s still here. Not only is he still here, he’s still performing at a high level, at the age of 44, seemingly extracting the most out of the Aston Martin AMR25.
‘Seemingly’, because his team-mate Lance Stroll, albeit experienced, remains something of an unknown. But this year, Alonso’s dominance over the Canadian became even more overwhelming.
Alonso outqualified Stroll in all 24 grand prix qualifying sessions. Even counting sprint qualifying, the two-time F1 champion is on a 28-strong winning streak against his team-mate, who prevailed at Shanghai only, by 0.073s. Over the whole season, the average gap was 0.367s.
Alonso did fail to score over the first eight rounds, when he usually failed to reach Q3, though he qualified fifth at Imola, where his strategy was hampered by a virtual safety car intervention.
There was clear pessimism in those early stages of the season, with Alonso frustrated to end up 13th in qualifying at a Jeddah track where he had “been super fast always”. Aston was by far the team who had gained the least performance into 2025 with its machinery; its main weakness was slow-speed corners.
But Alonso’s Imola performance was no serendipity, as that’s where Aston brought an update package that made it a consistent Q3 contender – at least in the team’s older driver’s hands. But Alonso was now complaining about a lack of top speed that forced him to “invent” overtakes in unusual places.
A four-round points-scoring streak ensued, but Alonso was unhappy to finish only ninth at Silverstone, where Nico Hulkenberg took his maiden podium, after both his pitstops turned out to be ill-timed.
Some updates failed to prove competitive, and a horrendous Spa-Francorchamps weekend followed with both Astons on the back row of the grid, before they rocketed to fifth and sixth the next weekend in Hungary – but the squad was none the wiser as they didn’t quite understand how the turnaround occurred.
“The good thing is that we were competitive and we were fast. The concerning thing is that we don't know why,” Alonso said after finishing the race in fifth, which turned out to be his best result of the season.
But he was bitter about those unsuccessful upgrades: “This is Formula 1, not an academy to test things. Here you have to deliver.”
By the Austin round, where he reached Q3 in both qualifying sessions and scored a point, Alonso again claimed that Aston had the ninth-fastest car out of 10.
To sum it up, the Spaniard has been grumpy. His Imola misfortune prompted him to say “it’s what we deserve”; he snapped at his engineer after a strategy mishap at Zandvoort – “you forgot about me in the first half of the race, maybe you remember I'm here in the second half”; he called on the team to “get some rest for 2026” as early as October.
His state of mind was exemplified by his late-season comments, stating he was going to celebrate the last two grands prix – “because we won't be driving this car anymore”.
So, Alonso’s focus is on 2026. He finished 10th in the 2025 championship, with just 56 points to his name – which isn’t atrocious given Aston’s struggles but still is his worst result since he returned to F1 with Alpine in 2021. That’s not what he’s here for, he has made that plainly clear.
F1’s new technical era from 2026 is Alonso’s last shot at glory, and who better to lead Aston’s potential title bid than Adrian Newey? The legendary engineer, who has contributed to 26 world titles across the drivers’ and constructors’ championships, joined the team nine months ago and is now taking on the team principal mantle.
Given how much Lawrence Stroll has invested into the Silverstone-based outfit, including a state-of-the-art campus, it has all it needs to succeed. Time will tell if Alonso finally gets rewarded for his patience.
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