Fernando Alonso scored Aston Martin’s best result of the 2026 Formula 1 season in the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, beating Lando Norris to eighth position.
The Adrian Newey-designed, Honda-powered AMR26 was more competitive than ever before, following its earlier struggles, at Sepang; Alonso and team-mate Lance Stroll both reached Q2, taking the 12th and 14th spots on the grid.
Starting the race on slicks did not pay off, but the first safety car brought Alonso back into the game, and he overtook Sergio Perez and Alexander Albon straight away to climb from 17th to 14th as Gabriel Bortoleto pitted.
The two-time world champion maintained his progress after his second pitstop, passing Stroll, Esteban Ocon and Arvid Lindblad to reach the top 10 on merit, albeit 17 seconds away from eighth-placed Norris.
Mercedes indirectly helped him to gain those last two spots, as George Russell retired with a technical issue and Lando Norris went off in safety car conditions, surprised by other cars slowing down for the stricken Silver Arrow.
“We were even faster than the Ferraris, overtook Hamilton, I was pulling away from him, so at that point I thought, ‘OK, this is going well’,” Alonso told Sky Sports F1, referring to his lap-four move on the Briton, with both world champions then struggling on slicks.
“But obviously, we were very slow with the slick, and thanks to the safety car, everything regrouped and started a new race from that point onwards.
Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing
Photo by: Alex Bierens de Haan / LAT Images via Getty Images
“Happy for the team. There are not many weekends where we can score points, and in those weekends we cannot have any mistakes and we cannot lose the opportunity. We executed well today, so I’m happy for the team, for the points.”
Alonso told Spanish media that he actually expected even better: “To be honest, I expected a little bit more from our race pace.
“We were doing OK, but I had a lot of oversteer. We made a small adjustment to the front wing, but it didn’t really fix it. So I’m happy with the result, but we still have work to do.”
Alonso did have to be resourceful in order to hold off a recovering Norris in the last few laps of the race.
“When you get involved in battles, like Lando did with Nico [Hulkenberg], I think they used up their battery and then he spent two laps recharging it,” he explained.
“I had a full battery for those two laps and I was using it on the straights. So I think these are also circumstances that can help you or hurt you if you manage to understand them and read them during the race.”
Meanwhile, Stroll finished down in 12th despite spending the whole race within reach of what would have been his first points finish of the year.
Alexander Albon, Williams, Lance Stroll, Aston Martin Racing
Photo by: Joe Portlock / Getty Images
“We were in the mix for the top 10, and then the last stint on hard, too much management,” he analysed. “I think the hard tyre was pretty robust; could have pushed more, lost a couple positions, finished 12th instead of a possible points finish.”
The Canadian lost 14 seconds to Alonso in 10 laps over the aforementioned stint – a 1.4s haemorrage per lap.
But what made the Aston Martin so competitive compared to previous events? Its Monza and Baku hardship are understood to have been mostly related to the struggling Honda power unit, and Alonso believes the Sepang performance to be track-specific.
The Spaniard therefore hopes for another decent result in Singapore, which “on paper” was supposed to be better than Sepang, next weekend.
“And then there are some other weeks that we are very uncompetitive and we have to accept it,” he told international written media.
Alonso has now scored as many points (seven) as Haas’ Ocon, Audi’s Nico Hulkenberg and Williams’ Carlos Sainz, while outscoring the latter’s team-mate – Albon is on five.
Additional reporting by Jacobo Vega and Ronald Vording
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