Fernando Alonso is having his worst start to an F1 season in years. In fact, things are so bleak that 2025 risks eclipsing his infamous 2015 campaign with McLaren-Honda—where he scored just 11 points and memorably slammed the power unit as a “GP2 engine.” His current team, Aston Martin, spent millions over the winter break upgrading facilities and bringing in new personnel to push the team forward. Yet, Alonso finds himself 17th in the standings with zero points and no signs of a turnaround in sight.
At the same time, the Spaniard’s teammate Lance Stroll, despite driving the same slow AMR25, has managed to eke out 14 points.
Stroll, who has been criticized for underwhelming performances for the majority of his F1 career, is currently carrying the Silverstone-based squad single-handedly. With another P5 finish in the Miami GP Sprint yesterday, he further established his status as the better Aston Martin driver this season.
In the same rain-affected race, Alonso was running in the points in the initial stages. But when the track dried, Aston Martin ignored Alonso’s pleas to switch to slicks, which completely derailed his race.
After Racing Bulls’ Yuki Tsunoda made his stop, Alonso’s race engineer Andrew Vizard instructed him to stay out, fearing a drop to the bottom. But Alonso declared, “Yeah, I’m not sure. Every lap will be one second slower.”
Even when Lewis Hamilton jumped into the pits for medium tires, the Aston Martin strategists weren’t sure about pitting. On this, the Spaniard reiterated, “I still think it’s better to stop. I think it’s gonna be very slow, the last couple of laps [on the inters].”
Fernando Alonso was constantly suggesting that they should pit for slick tires when the track started drying in the Miami sprint race, but the Aston Martin pit wall ignored his suggestion until it was too late. pic.twitter.com/0xIx8ELR7h
— Motorsport Fan (@F1IndyWEC) May 4, 2025
Alonso kept insisting that he would be able to make up for lost track positions by making overtakes on the dry compound tires. However, by the time Aston Martin agreed, it was too late, and the #14 driver came out in the middle of a bit too much traffic, which ultimately led to his collision with Liam Lawson.
It was a bizarre strategy from Aston Martin.
Alonso, clearly the more experienced driver, has been the team’s leader since 2023, even guiding them to eight podium finishes in his first-ever season with the team. As such, the fact that Stroll was prioritized baffled many Redditors, despite the Montreal-born driver having the better season so far.
“AM proving they’re not [a] serious team. Not listening to your No1 driver who happens to be the most experienced driver in the history of the sport,” one fan commented.
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Another user joked that “They did listen to him. So they pitted Stroll to help him lol.”
And Stroll did get help. But had the British team listened to Alonso—at a time when points are coming at a premium—they could have secured another point by having Alonso finish at least P8 on the day. The two-time world champion, after all, has been in F1 since 2001, making him arguably the one person to listen to in the Aston Martin garage.
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Regardless, Aston Martin appear to be treating the 2025 season as a write-off—and perhaps even Alonso knows that, which might explain his apparent contentment with the string of poor results this year. The team’s main objective is to get the 2026 regulations right and make a significant leap in performance to climb up the pecking order.
With brilliant technical minds such as Adrian Newey and Andy Cowell heading the team into the new regulations era, Alonso is still trusting that they can overturn Aston Martin’s fortunes in 2026.
