Fernando Alonso had teased that he would make a call on his Formula 1 future early in the season, but few expected it to be quite this early.
It’s a win for Formula 1, which retains not only one of its fastest drivers but also one of its most interesting characters.
But it’s most of all a massive win for Aston Martin, validating its plans to rise to the top of the sport.
It’s why securing his signature is such a big win for Aston Martin and its plans to rise to the top of the sport.
Two-time world champion has been clear about one thing since his Formula 1 return: he’s not interested in only making up the numbers.
Losing him would have been a blow not only to the team’s prestige but to its morale. Securing a driver of a similar calibre would have been difficult.
But Alonso clearly sees the future as sufficiently bright to stick with it.
It’s also not enough to say Aston Martin was simply the option of least resistance.
Alonso has talked openly about the strain of F1’s growing calendar and the requirement to commit 100 per cent mental and physical energy over a growing number of weeks. He publicly suggested that, without sufficient motivation to continue giving his all, retirement could beckon.
He’s also admitted to talking to other teams.
Evidently Aston Martin is enticing enough to stave off the inevitable not just for the immediate future but to keep open the possibility of racing deep into his 40s, describing this as the longest contract of his career.
“I felt I love the driving too much,” he said, per The Race. “I cannot stop at the moment.
“And I think the sacrifices you have to make are smaller than the joy of driving and the passion I have.
“I breathe Formula 1. I live Formula 1. I train to be fit to drive Formula 1 cars. I eat to be fit to drive Formula 1 cars.
“My lifestyle is great and I love what I do, so I will not be happy sitting at home watching Formula 1 races, because at the moment I still feel I should be there.”
RED BULL RACING NOT READY TO COMMIT
But it’s also true to say that Alonso’s ferocious competitiveness wouldn’t see him settle if he wasn’t reasonably certain that a better seat isn’t on offer.
There were reports in recent weeks that he was pushing hard for a drive with Red Bull Racing, where Sergio Pérez is out of contract at the end of the year and where Max Verstappen has put conditions on him seeing out his deal through to the end of 2028.
In the event Verstappen were to talk, Alonso would be an obvious replacement as a championship-calibre driver still operating at a high level. It would also make the identity of the team’s other driver less of a pressing issue.
Replacing Pérez alongside Verstappen, however, makes substantially less sense.
Team boss Christian Horner has long been wary of fielding two alpha drivers. Pairing Alonso and Verstappen would have been a recipe for destabilisation.
As it stands Pérez’s seat is the only one up for grabs, and we can only assume that door has been closed to him.
There is still a chance that Verstappen could walk, but the wait could be long. Verstappen doesn’t need to re-sign, and there would always be the risk that the entire driver market moves on before the Dutchman makes a decision. If he stays, anyone who had waited for a break could be left without a seat.
Alonso last week also proclaimed that he felt there was “zero chance” of Verstappen leaving. Whether he thinks the odds of it happening are zero or just very slim, holding out clearly appears to be a risky move.
Signing a long-term deal with a team that still has a chance of becoming a winner is the next-best option.
COLD, HARD TRUTH FOR MERCEDES
Of course Mercedes has a seat available, and team boss Toto Wolff has canvassed the possibility of dropping in an experienced driver as Lewis Hamilton’s replacement. He’s notably courting Verstappen for the drive.
Alonso might make as much sense on a short-term deal to keep Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s seat warm if the F2 racer is considered unready for a works drive next year.
But it doesn’t make sense for Alonso.
Alonso has re-signed with a view to retiring in the short term. He clearly thinks he has years still to give to F1. Just as he turned up his nose at Alpine trying to manage him into retirement, a short-term deal with Mercedes would never have appealed.
And then there’s the cold, hard truth that Mercedes isn’t the team it used to be.
We’re far beyond pretending Mercedes is the same team that dominated the sport last decade. For three years it’s struggled badly to understand the current regulations. While it has a chance to get back to its winning ways with the new rules in 2026, who’s to say it won’t make the same mistakes again? It has the same chance as any other frontrunner of getting it right.
Aston Martin has been roughly on par with Mercedes in the opening rounds of this season, but at least the green team has a positive trajectory, having risen from the back of the field into podium contention in the last two years.
Asked about the chance of moving to Mercedes last week, Alonso was blunt.
“Mercedes is behind us, so it doesn’t feel that attractive,” he said.
The massive investment Aston Martin is undertaking to modernise will start to pay dividends from this year onwards. Mercedes, meanwhile, isn’t yet sure what it needs to change to restore itself to competitiveness.
There’s a lot more upside to Alonso sticking with what he knows.
SAINZ, TSUNODA, THE BIGGEST LOSERS
Alonso’s decision takes one frontrunning seat off the market, leaving just two more up for grabs.
That’s bad news for two drivers in particular.
Carlos Sainz is in search of a competitive seat after being dumped by Ferrari for Lewis Hamilton. The Spaniard is in sizzling form, reminding the sport that he deserves to race at the front.
There are few obvious places for him to slot into, however.
Red Bull Racing remains a possibility, but as long as Pérez continues to perform ably as a rear gunner, the team will see limited reason to replace him. RBR only really wants a driver who can back up the star Dutchman, not a driver of Sainz’s potential to disrupt the dynamic by competing for poles and wins.
Mercedes is the other, but the same limitations on Alonso’s thinking also apply. Sainz would get only a short-term deal as a seat warmer for young gun Antonelli.
Thumping George Russell might convince Mercedes to write off its investment in the Briton, but what are the odds Sainz could pull that off in what could be as short as a one-year deal in a car that clearly has serious issues? It would be a massive career risk.
Aston Martin would have made more sense. If Alonso had left, Sainz would almost certainly have won a long-term deal to the lead the team into the new rules era.
Now, however, leadership of Audi’s F1 project beckons as his best bet. It could pay off in the long term, but the abject lack of competitiveness of the current Sauber team means it’ll be a long slog, and he’ll be doomed to at least one season of scratching away for the odd point from the back of the field.
Yuki Tsunoda’s future is also dealt a big blow by the news.
Tsunoda is in a rare fourth year with Red Bull’s junior RB squad, a seat he occupies partly — though not entirely — thanks to his link to power unit supplier Honda.
He could likely squeeze another year out of his deal there if he continues beating Daniel Ricciardo, but Red Bull Racing stubbornly refuses to consider him a viable option for the senior team, limiting his long-term options.
His place then becomes less secure once Honda’s supply deal expires at the end of next year.
Many had tipped him as a chance to follow Honda to Aston Martin. That door is now closed, with no-one seriously considering Lance Stroll at risk of being replaced.
That could tip Tsunoda into a driver market featuring the likes of race winners Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly and the highly rated Alex Albon along with young guns backed by bigger teams.
It’s not a career death sentence, but it makes his path to 2026 and beyond much narrower and piles on the pressure to deliver big performances more often this season.
THE UNTHINKABLE HONDA LINK SET FOR RENEWAL
There is one additional element to Alonso’s re-signing of particular interest, and that’s his reunion with Honda after his previous relationship with the Japanese brand ended acrimoniously.
Aston Martin will become the de facto Honda works team from 2026.
Alonso and Honda suffered a tumultuous — to say the least — three-year relationship at McLaren in 2015–18 during the Japanese marque’s troubled early days building F1’s turbo-hybrid power unit.
The friction originated in Honda’s first uncompetitive motor in 2015 and Alonso’s refusal to hide his displeasure to save the face of the image-sensitive Japanese brand.
The most memorable flashpoint was him railing over team radio during Honda’s home Japanese Grand Prix that it had build a “GP2 engine”, referring the predecessor to the current Formula 2 category.
It was a devastating precision strike.
There were subsequently rumours of the white-anting of top Honda motor personnel, ultimately damaging the relationship beyond repair.
Improvements were evident at the end of the season, but a wholesale redesign of the motor for 2017 saw it take a big step backwards in competitiveness and reliability, and the McLaren-Honda partnership blew up spectacularly.
Ironically those 2017 changes are what put Honda onto the pathway to the world championship with Max Verstappen in 2021 and Red Bull Racing the following year.
McLaren subsequently found with a switch to Renault engines that its car was as much of a problem.
Honda never forgot those McLaren years, and it came back to bite Alonso hard.
The Spaniard retired from F1 at the end of 2018 to try to complete the so-called ‘triple crown’ by winning the Indianapolis 500.
He’d tackled the Brickyard with a McLaren-backed Honda-powered entry in 2017, but the team was forced to switch to Chevrolet engines in 2019 following the breakdown of the relationship.
A plan for Alonso to enter the Indy 500 with Andretti in 2020 was subsequently vetoed by Honda, the team’s engine supplier. Reportedly the call was made by Honda head office in Tokyo.
He hasn’t entered the Indy 500 again since.
But evidently the drama is water under the bridge.
Alonso has mellowed somewhat in recent years, and management both at Honda head office and in Honda Racing Corporation has also changed.
Honda said at the time it announced its Aston Martin partnership that it was open to racing with Alonso again.
That once unthinkable possibility will now come to pass.
“It didn’t work for us in McLaren, but right after that they fixed all the problems and they are currently dominating and they’ve been world champions for the last few years,” Alonso said per The Race.
“They will have a baseline for 2026 that is already very strong.
“But also they have the capacity in Sakura of building something really nice. I visited Sakura in 2014–16. I didn’t visit yet at the moment, but I know that they are really, really motivated there.”
