Fernando Alonso defends Honda’s nightmare start to 2026
Originally published by Motorsportweek
Fernando Alonso has jumped to the defence of Honda, as the Japanese manufacturer continues to endure a miserable start to its official Formula 1 return in 2026.
Alonso is experiencing deja vu as Aston Martin, enduring a woeful start to the season, with Honda’s unreliability sharing remarkable similarities to another period of the Spaniard’s career.
Back in 2015, Alonso returned to McLaren for its tie-up with Honda, part of a partnership that saw the team plummet to ninth in the constructors’ championship.
Honda spectacularly underestimated the regulations that year, the engine proving unreliable and slow, prompting the now infamous “GP2 engine” radio message in Japan from Alonso.
Ten years on, and Alonso looks to be trapped in a similar scenario, with Honda’s new power unit suffering from extreme vibrations.
But, he has revealed a very different culture at the Japanese manufacturer in 2026 compared to the ill-fated McLaren years he endured.
“I think I can see things now in a different perspective and a different maturity, but I don’t think that ten years ago things were that dramatic,” Alonso said to media, including Motorsport Week..
“This is Formula 1, a very media-centric sport. When you win a few championships just racing against your team-mate, you are God, and then when you are fighting and having some difficult period, everything is magnified as well.
“In a way, ten years later, some of the things that people thought about me ten years ago, when we had this situation, now they maybe changed opinion and maybe they think that I was right ten years ago, because for me the biggest surprise was all these last few years thinking that ten years ago McLaren, Stoffel [Vandoorne] Jenson [Button] and myself — because always people seem to remember only Fernando, but I think Jenson, Stoffel and McLaren, we were saying the same — that project, the power unit, was not mature enough when we started, which everyone seems now to understand.
Fernando Alonso describes a different culture at Honda
Alonso also described the rationale behind wanting to work with Honda through its malaise, as it targets a return to form.
“But two or three years ago, it seemed that I was crazy, ten years ago, criticising or something like that. It was, I think, a few frustrations on the radio, which, yeah, were there, and as a double world champion and a competitive driver, I was not happy with the situation – wow, you know, should I be happy and clapping inside the car about the job?
“So now I think when everyone sees from the outside that situation, and they see the current situation, I think they are a little bit more friendly with us, and they understand the problems more.
“And now what can I do in the team is just work harder, try to help Honda as much as we can, allocating some of the resources that Aston Martin has into the engine, into the power unit, into the vibration problems, into the deployment issues.
“Obviously, we are now in a different world in Formula 1 with all the data available, all the GPS, the analysis that we can have from the other teams, and we can allocate some of those resources to make Honda… or they can focus on one thing, and we can help them in some other areas on the power unit.
“So, we are one team. As I said, it’s a bumpy start, but I hope it will not last for too long. But it will not be an immediate solution either, so yeah, let’s see.”
Alonso’s public display of support for Honda will likely be noted in Sakura, and will add motivation for Aston Martin’s engine partner, at a time when positives are proving difficult to find.