Alonso qualifies last at home in Barcelona as Aston Martin's woes leave him 'exhausted'

Fernando Alonso qualified last for his home Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona on Saturday, ending a 42-race streak of outqualifying team-mate Lance Stroll and finishing four seconds off pole position — the worst qualifying performance yet for Aston Martin’s troubled 2026 campaign.

Stroll was 21st, a full second ahead of Alonso and still a second behind the next slowest car, the Cadillac. The result underlined the scale of Aston Martin’s problems, with the team carrying what Alonso himself described as “the worst car and the worst engine” on the grid.

Alonso was blunt when asked whether Barcelona had exposed additional weaknesses. “No, no, no. Nothing has been exposed,” he said. “We knew we have the worst car and the worst engine and we’ve been very clear in every race so far that we have to work.”

The two-time world champion also detailed a series of mechanical difficulties during his qualifying lap, pointing to a recurring integration problem between the team’s in-house gearbox and the Honda power unit. “In some corners it felt like pulling a handbrake, complete rear locking with both rear wheels fully locked,” he said. “In other corners I had what felt like half-throttle while braking, and then you just go straight on. So every lap is a bit of a lottery at the moment.”

Aston Martin has opted to consolidate its development resources into one larger upgrade package expected in the summer, judging that smaller, incremental updates would not be sufficient to bring the car into Q2 contention. Honda is also working on a power unit upgrade on a similar timeline, though neither party has committed to an exact date.

With no meaningful progress on the horizon before that package arrives, Alonso acknowledged that repeating the same explanation weekend after weekend is taking its toll. “We repeat the same thing every weekend. It’s exhausting. We’re last, we know it, and we have no problem admitting it,” he told Spanish media.

“We’re waiting for the second half of the season, and hopefully when the new car arrives, we can improve a bit. It’s all becoming very repetitive.”

Alonso also pre-empted the next round, warning that little will change in Austria in two weeks. “We will arrive in Austria and we will be last in qualifying,” he said — a candid acknowledgement that the team’s difficulties are structural rather than circuit-specific, and that patience remains the only available strategy until the summer.