Fernando Alonso said Aston Martin’s Friday pace in Mexico City beat expectations, after the AMR26 looked more competitive than the team had planned for at altitude. He finished P7 in FP1 and P12 in FP2, and the car was benchmarked as the seventh fastest on a day when thin air, heat and braking demands were all supposed to make life harder.
That is why Alonso is being searched now: Friday in Mexico City offered the first proper clue on whether Aston Martin could carry any pace into the weekend, and his answer was upbeat. He said he came into it open-minded because Mexico is such a unique place, and that he thought the team might get a surprise. Instead, he sounded like the surprise had already arrived.
“Probably yes,” Alonso said when asked whether the team had gone better than expected. “At the moment at least on my side of the garage, the car is working well.” He added that the main concerns in Mexico are the normal ones: altitude, turbo speed, temperature and brakes. On his reading, the lack of downforce was not adding another layer of trouble, either. “No big difference, to be honest,” he said. “We were all worrying about the lack of downforce this year compared to previous events, but I think the car feels very similar to the last few years here.”
There was a reason the performance stood out. Mexico City’s altitude normally makes engines, brakes and temperatures work harder, and lower air density cuts downforce, which usually blunts a car’s balance. Yet Alonso said the AMR26 felt workable on his side of the garage, and he was not describing a lucky lap or a one-off result. The team’s own reading of the day was echoed by Pedro de la Rosa, who said the car was “slightly better than expected” and that the circuit’s slow-speed sections appeared to suit Aston Martin more than anticipated.
That said, the Friday picture was not clean. Alonso also said Lance Stroll’s car had issues that needed checking for Saturday, which means the encouraging pace did not extend evenly across both sides of the garage. Jak Crawford also stopped on track in FP1, and Stroll was playing catch-up in FP2, leaving Aston Martin with useful speed on one side and work still to do on the other. In a weekend that was supposed to test the team, the immediate question is whether the seventh-fastest car on Friday can stay intact long enough to matter when the running gets serious.
