The first time Alonso-Honda went wrong. Plus: How you rank 2026 car liveries

By The Athletic Staff

History is repeating itself in Formula 1. Eleven years after Fernando Alonso’s first Honda-powered project imploded amid engine failures and public acrimony, the Spaniard finds himself in an eerily similar predicament at Aston Martin.

Pre-season testing for the 2026 championship has delivered a sobering reality check for the Silverstone squad. The AMR26, penned by Adrian Newey and powered by Honda’s latest hybrid V6, has spent more time on the back of a flat-bed truck than on the timing sheets. In Barcelona the car emerged only in the closing hours of day three, managing five laps before a terminal problem sidelined Lance Stroll. Three weeks later in Bahrain both Alonso and Stroll ground to a halt on-track; on the final day the team recorded six installation laps, never bothered to set a competitive time and wheeled the cars into the garage for good.

The culprit, according to engineers briefed on the matter, is a serious defect inside Honda’s energy-storage system, specifically the battery pack. The failure mode is painfully familiar to anyone who watched McLaren-Honda between 2015 and 2017. Then, an ultra-tight “size-zero” chassis—designed to claw back aerodynamic efficiency—left the Japanese manufacturer’s maiden turbo-hybrid power unit gasping for both cooling and reliability. Alonso retired 12 times in 2015 alone, memorably branding the package a “GP2 engine” while being lapped at Suzuka and later sunbathing in a marshal’s chair after yet another practice breakdown in São Paulo.

McLaren divorced Honda at the end of 2017, but not before a disastrous pre-season in which the team completed only 217 laps across four test days. Aston’s tally last week: 128 laps in three days, a regression that has reopened old wounds. Honda insists it has “no objections whatsoever” to rekindling its relationship with Alonso, yet the power-unit regulations introduced for 2026 cap development spending, meaning the manufacturer cannot simply out-spend its way to a fix. With the season-opening Australian Grand Prix a fortnight away, the clock is ticking.

Could Alonso walk away again? At 44, and with more than 400 Grand Prix starts to his name, his political capital inside the garage remains formidable, but his practical options are narrowing. F1’s new engine formula was supposed to reset the competitive order; instead it may trap Aston and Honda in the same reliability spiral that derailed McLaren a decade ago.

While the green team wrestles with its demons, Cadillac offered a dose of optimism. The American manufacturer, initially rejected as Andretti Global, will enter F1 next week under the Cadillac banner after a rebranding that satisfied the sport’s commercial stakeholders. The team christened its 2026 challenger the MAC-26—Mario Andretti Cadillac 2026—honouring the 1978 world champion who helped shepherd the project from dream to reality. Mario Andretti’s presence in the launch video, beaming as he traced the car’s silhouette, underscored a personal victory after years of political wrangling.

Away from the workshop floor, readers of The Athletic’s Prime Tire newsletter delivered their verdict on this year’s liveries. Mercedes’ silver-and-turquoise scheme vaulted to the top of the fan poll, while Alpine plummeted from third to tenth, punished for a colour palette voters deemed uninspired. Aston Martin’s muted green slipped to eleventh, mirroring its on-track misfortunes. The visual rankings may seem trivial, but in a sport where perception often shapes sponsorship dollars, every position matters.

As the freight crates head to Melbourne, the plot lines are set: a resurgent Mercedes, a nostalgic Cadillac fairytale, and—once more—a brilliant but frustrated Fernando Alonso wondering whether Honda can exorcise its demons before patience, and points, run dry.