alonso deserves better
honda did it to him again. eleven years later. the same shit. i can't cope.
not again man. not again.
honda did it to him again.
eleven years later. the same fucking company. the same fucking result. fernando alonso, 44 years old, two world championships, arguably the most talented driver to ever race in formula one, and honda just did the exact same thing to him again. i can't cope with this.
"gp2 engine. gp2." that was 2015. alonso screaming on the radio because the honda power unit in the back of his mclaren was so catastrophically shit that he was getting overtaken on straights by cars that had no business being anywhere near him. "the engine is much better than before. much better. slower than before, but much better." that was peak alonso. the man is getting lapped and he's still cracking jokes because what else can you do when your engine has the power output of a honda civic with a flat tyre.
three years of that. 2015, 2016, 2017. three years of one of the greatest drivers alive stuck in a car that couldn't finish a race. the turbo would die. the ers would fail. the whole thing would just give up mid-race like it had somewhere better to be. alonso dragging that shitbox to places it had absolutely no business being, and the engine going "nah" every other weekend.
honda's redemption arc was for everyone except alonso
then honda left mclaren. went to red bull. and won four consecutive world championships with verstappen. FOUR. the same engine. the same honda. alonso watched from the outside as the power unit he'd spent three years suffering with turned into a title winner the moment it was in someone else's car. the universe looked at fernando alonso and said "fuck you specifically."
the dream team vs the meme team
and now. 2026. new regs. new team. new opportunity. aston martin signs adrian newey, the greatest car designer who's ever lived. the man spent thirty years wanting to run a team his way, got denied shares at williams, got sidelined by committee at mclaren, and finally at aston martin gets the keys. team principal, equity, the whole thing. enrico cardile from ferrari. andy cowell from mercedes. new wind tunnel. new sims. lawrence stroll's billions. stroll being on the epstein list is genuinely the least concerning thing about this team right now, which tells you everything about how bad the car situation is.
the dream team. newey designs the car, alonso drives it, third wdc at 44 twenty years after his last title. storybook ending. the goat gets what he deserves.
instead.
six laps and a prayer
instead honda handed them a generator from a camping store wired to a car battery.
the honda power unit can't recover energy at the 250kw MINIMUM. not the target. the minimum. the floor. the absolute lowest acceptable threshold. they can't hit it. the gearbox aston built in-house? broken on day one. battery? dead by day two. stroll said they're four and a half seconds off the pace. they ran fewer laps in bahrain than cadillac, a team that literally didn't exist twelve months ago. on the final day of testing, they completed six laps. six. then packed up and went home because they ran out of usable parts.
how to build a car (and then not have an engine for it)
newey literally wrote the book on building race cars. "how to build a car." it's right there. but there's no chapter called "what to do when honda shows up with a power unit that can't keep the lights on." the man can design the most beautiful car in the history of aerodynamics and it means absolutely nothing if the engine behind the driver is committing suicide every three laps.
and the thing is, i should've seen this coming. newey himself said back in may 2025 that the simulator was a "handicap." that the correlation between what the sim showed and what the car did on track was broken. he said it could take two years to fix. TWO YEARS. he was designing a car with tools he didn't trust. the greatest aerodynamicist alive, drawing a car based on data he knew was shit. that's not a recipe for a championship. that's a recipe for bahrain.
fernando alonso's career, a tragedy in seven acts
but none of that matters as much as the honda thing. because this is personal now.
2007: joins mclaren, spygate happens, the whole season implodes. 2010: loses the championship at the last race because ferrari's strategy team left him stuck behind petrov. petrov. PETROV. 2012: loses the championship at the last race AGAIN despite not even having the fastest car, just outdriving it every weekend. 2015 to 2017: honda. 2023: aston martin starts strong, eight podiums, then the car falls off a cliff. 2024 and 2025: aston martin gets worse. 2026: honda does the exact same thing to him again except this time the car can't even complete a test day.
at this point it's not bad luck, it's a restraining order from god
at what point does bad luck stop being bad luck and start being a curse. because the pattern with this man is too consistent to be random. every time he's in a position to win, something breaks. every time there's a chance for the storybook ending, the universe says no. it's like someone somewhere specifically decided that fernando alonso will have every ounce of talent required to be the greatest of all time and absolutely none of the fortune to prove it.
"there was no problem. it was just quicker to walk the lap instead." his humor about all of this is the only reason i haven't thrown my phone at a wall. in two weeks i'm going to watch melbourne and the green car is going to retire on lap 12 with an energy recovery failure while the rest of the grid fights for the podium. i've been saying "maybe next year" about alonso for twenty years. at some point "maybe" just turns into "no."
is he doomed. i think he's actually doomed. and that's the saddest thing in this entire sport.