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Fernando Alonso has chosen another season in Formula 1 with Aston Martin. At 45, with two world titles and 32 Grand Prix victories, he has every right to decide that he still wants to race. The harder question is what he expects racing in this particular car, for this particular team, to give him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On 10 September, Alonso said he needed to understand the direction of the 2027 regulations before deciding whether to remain behind the wheel. He spoke about the possibility of another role at Aston Martin and acknowledged that racing in the World Endurance Championship was an option. Asked when he would settle his future, he was emphatic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy decision will not come soon,\u201d Alonso said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It came 19 days later. That does not establish that Alonso was being dishonest in Madrid: negotiations and personal decisions can move quickly. It does show that his public timetable was unreliable. Aston Martin\u2019s announcement supplies no evidence that the competitive questions he raised then have been answered in the meantime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alonso has never lacked belief in his ability. In June, discussing how he assessed his own performance during Aston Martin\u2019s difficult season, he dismissed the idea that race results were the measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m the best. I don\u2019t need to prove anything,\u201d he said in remarks reported by Crash.net<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He explained that he still judged himself by his speed in other machinery and believed an improved F1 car would eventually give him the chance to show it again. It is a defensible distinction: a driver does not design the car beneath him, and Alonso has often extracted more from difficult equipment than its results appeared to promise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But time is part of this argument too. His last victory was for Ferrari at the Spanish Grand Prix on 12 May 2013<\/strong>. As of this renewal, the gap is more than 13 years and four months<\/strong>. Nobody can fairly assign all of that drought to Alonso\u2019s driving. Equally, his own decisions about where to race have shaped how long he has had to wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is the uncomfortable feature of his career\u2019s final phase. Alonso has repeatedly committed to projects with the resources or ambition to win later. Aston Martin has spent heavily on its Silverstone facilities, brought in Adrian Newey and entered a works partnership with Honda. Those are serious reasons to consider the team\u2019s future. They are not a substitute for a competitive car today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alonso has spent 2026 explaining why the current Aston Martin falls short. He has criticised the driving experience under the new F1 regulations and the team\u2019s performance. The problems have at times gone beyond lap time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the beginning of the season, Newey described vibrations associated with the Honda power unit as a major concern for the car and its drivers. Alonso retired from the Chinese Grand Prix after struggling with vibration levels in the cockpit. The team subsequently worked with Honda on measures to address the issue; it would be inaccurate to claim, without fresh evidence, that the same level of physical danger persists at every race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFrom about lap 20 I was struggling with the vibration levels,\u201d Alonso said after retiring in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sporting results remain stark. Aston Martin has scored three points across the first 15 rounds of 2026, all through Alonso, and sits tenth among 11 teams. His contribution within the team is plain. The question is why a driver who measures himself against the best is choosing to spend more of his remaining F1 career waiting for this organisation to become one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In announcing his renewal, Alonso said he had taken time over the decision and still had the speed and determination to compete at the highest level. He praised Aston Martin\u2019s leadership, staff, partners and facilities. Those are expressions of faith in the people and the project. The evidence on the track in 2026 makes that faith a gamble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alonso has already demonstrated that leaving F1 need not mean leaving elite competition. During his previous spell away, he won Le Mans twice and the World Endurance Championship with Toyota. He has also competed in the Indianapolis 500 and the Dakar Rally. In Madrid this month, he confirmed that WEC racing remained an option<\/a> if he stepped out of the F1 cockpit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another programme could have offered a different test of the claim that he remains among the fastest drivers in the world. Aston Martin itself competes in top-level endurance racing. That path would have involved risks of its own, but it would have placed Alonso\u2019s ability in a contest where victories might be attainable now rather than promised for some undefined point in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, he has chosen familiarity and a role at the centre of Aston Martin\u2019s F1 development. Calling that simply a lack of ambition would ignore the work involved in trying to lift a struggling team. But his choice also narrows the force of his recurring complaints. Alonso can criticise a slow car, uncomfortable driving conditions and regulations he believes diminish driver skill. He cannot present the consequences of staying as if they were imposed on him without his consent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The renewal does not erase his standing as a driver. It does make 2027 another test of his judgement. If Aston Martin improves dramatically, Alonso will have earned credit for seeing the project through. If it remains near the back, he will have committed another year of an exceptional career to the hope that the team\u2019s investment eventually becomes speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAston Martin\u2019s problems are more than a lack of pace<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A different way to show what Alonso can still do<\/h2>\n\n\n\n