The Spaniard finished 16th after overtaking Pérez and Bottas. The team was the only one that did not bring upgrades to Florida and used the short race to learn about energy management. On Sunday, the goal remains to score the first points.
Aston Martin's reality is stubborn and Fernando Alonso does not hide it, after the Miami Grand Prix sprint race, the Asturian driver bluntly outlined the picture of his team: they are still far from the points, immersed in a fight at the lower end of the grid that not even technical upgrades have been able to reverse.
Alonso finished the short Saturday race in 16th position, but the result was the least of it, the two time Spanish champion made a couple of notable overtakes on the two Cadillacs, first on Valtteri Bottas and then on Sergio Pérez, which at least allowed him to close the day with a small dose of spectacle.
"Well, there we are in our battle at the back (with Checo Pérez), but well, we've been trying to learn things about energy," he summarized frankly when asked about the overtake on the Mexican, adding, revealing what the true objective of the afternoon was.
For Aston Martin, the sprint was not a race as such, it was, in Alonso's own words, a test bench: "We haven't run in a group too much this year either, so we use these moments to follow other cars or even teammates to learn things," the Asturian explained.
The tire choice confirmed that philosophy, while the rest of the grid opted for medium or hard compounds, Aston Martin was the only team that mounted soft tires on both Alonso's and Lance Stroll's cars, a decision that, according to the Spaniard, had a simple explanation: "I don't know, I didn't see the other tires, but we weren't going to get any points either, it was a test session for us, so it didn't matter which tire we used. We tried to save all the possible ones for tomorrow of the mediums and hards," he added.
The diagnosis is clear: Aston Martin arrives in Miami as the slowest team on the grid, even behind Cadillac, which is in its debut season, worse still, it is the only team that has not introduced upgrades to the AMR26 for this event.
While Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull have debuted aerodynamic packages, the Silverstone team has limited itself to working with what they had, focusing their efforts on the Honda power unit and energy management.
Alonso himself had already warned in the previous weeks that the team needed time, but time does not seem enough when races without scoring points accumulate. Alonso and Stroll are the only drivers, along with those of Cadillac, who have yet to open their scoring account in 2026, given what was seen in the sprint, and taking into account the decision not to bring upgrades to Florida, it seems complicated for Aston Martin to get its first point of the year in Sunday's race. Alonso, meanwhile, will continue in test mode. He has no other choice.