Fernando Alonso extended his pointless start to 2025 by finishing 11th at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, forcing the two-time world champion to hold crisis talks with Aston Martin
Aston Martin have held crisis talks after lead driver Fernando Alonso admitted he fears that he go the entire season without scoring a single point. Two-time world champion Alonso, the most experienced driver on the grid at 43 years old, is one of only four drivers yet to get off the mark in 2025.
Three of those are rookies, raising serious alarm bells for the Silverstone-based team. During this month’s Grand Prix triple-header in Japan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, both Alonso and team-mate Lance Stroll – the son of team owner Lawrence – failed to score any points.
After finishing 11th, one place outside the points, as he did in Japan, Alonso lamented: “I gave everything on track. It was hard to keep up the pace with the cars in front. We were just not quick enough.
“P11 is the worst position probably you can finish and we need to get used to it. It’s going to be difficult to score points this year.”
The Spaniard added: “Today we are P11 also because Yuki [Tsunoda] and [Pierre] Gasly had contact in lap one and Liam [Lawson] had a 10-second penalty. If not, we were P14. But there’s still a long way to go.”
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Newly-appointed team principal Andy Cowell revealed in Jeddah that a meeting between senior Aston Martin chiefs had been scheduled for Monday. “We’re getting together to have a think about what we’ve learned over this triple-header, and [ask] what do we do going forward?” Cowell told the Race.
“Can we get more out of the car? Yes, I think we can. I think there’s many areas where we look back over the last the races and [think] we can get more out of the car. Is it enough to win races? No.
“But is it where we can push forward a bit more? Yes, it is. We’re learning about this car, and we’re learning about all the new equipment that we’ve got in the factory, and how to push things forward.”
The arrival of legendary engineer Adrian Newey from Red Bull last year marked Aston Martin’s ambitions to become a championship-winning team, but seemingly only when the new regulations come in for the 2026 season. “100 per cent of Adrian’s designing time is focused on ’26,” Cowell said earlier in the weekend.
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“He joined in March, so there was a period of him getting up to speed with the regulations, up to speed with the concept work we’d been doing in the preceding couple of months. There are some tough deadlines to meet for releasing monocoque details, transmission details.
“The cars are running earlier for the ’26 season, the test is at the end of January, so getting a car ready for that point requires slightly earlier decision points. And clearly everything’s new – there’s zero carryover – so there’s lots of work there and Adrian’s just been focused on that.”
Aston Martin have just under a fortnight to improve their car ahead of the Miami Grand Prix on Sunday, May 4. Since his debut season driving for Minardi back in 2001, Alonso has never gone a full campaign without scoring a single point.
The last time he failed to score in the opening five rounds of the season came in 2017 when he drove for McLaren-Honda. Stroll, meanwhile, finished 16th in Saudi Arabia after qualifying in the same position.
So far this season, the Canadian has scored all 10 of Aston Martin’s points and bemoaned their car’s lack of pace on Sunday. “It’s tight for sure, it’s always tight,” Stroll reflected.
“We didn’t really have the pace all weekend to go through from Q1. It was always like we were 18th, 19th all weekend, and now we’re 16th. I think it was actually our most competitive session of the weekend, but we just need some more pace.”
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