Alonso slams ‘borderline abuse’ of Aston Martin – hints at F1 future

Fernando Alonso has had enough. Standing before the media on Thursday at the Red Bull Ring, the two-time World Champion unleashed a fiercely protective defense of Aston Martin, taking aim at the toxic wave of online mockery hitting the team while forcefully shutting down rumors of an impending escape to Alpine.

The Silverstone-based squad and its new power unit partner, Honda, have spent the 2026 season firmly under the microscope for all the wrong reasons.

Ever since it became glaringly obvious ahead of the opener in Melbourne that the AMR26 package was severely lacking pace, Alonso has found himself fighting at the wrong end of the grid.

This shocking underperformance has opened the floodgates for wild paddock speculation, with intense rumors suggesting the 44-year-old might orchestrate one final hurrah back at Alpine, or simply throw in the towel on his legendary career entirely.

But anyone expecting Alonso to wave a white flag in Spielberg was sorely mistaken. Instead, the Spaniard fired back at the narrative surrounding his future.

“I mean, there are always rumours, we’ve been very badly treated by the outside world,” a testy Alonso said. “And it’s normal. We are underperforming, we are in a bad moment. And when summer break comes, there are always rumours.

“There are rumours in the top teams, there are rumours also in our case because we are underperforming. But as I said, my commitment with Aston Martin is beyond my driving time.

“I believe in this project and we have the right people. We have, obviously, the best of the best. With Adrian Newey, we have Honda. We started with the back foot, yes, we understand that. But we are trying to put things in place as short as possible.”

Confronting the social media vitriol

For Alonso, the criticism has veered far away from constructive sporting analysis and crossed into something far more malicious.

He strongly condemned the online ecosystem that has weaponized Aston Martin’s current struggles for clicks and easy laughs, drawing a hard line between fair critique and unacceptable harassment.

“We are an easy target because we are at the back and there is all this social media and all these things and jokes that you can put on ourselves,” the F1 veteran noted with palpable frustration.

“Probably, that’s borderline to be abused in social media. We talk sometimes that we are not happy with our position, but we are hard workers. And Honda are hard workers. And Aston Martin, we are 1,000 people of hard workers.

“They go Monday to Sunday to work eight hours to fix our problems. And the problems will be fixed. It’s a matter of time. I believe in the project.”

Unity in the face of adversity

Despite the grueling reality of having to answer for an uncompetitive car weekend after weekend, Alonso went out of his way to emphasize total solidarity with team leadership.

Rather than rushing out panic fixes that could compromise the team's financial and technical future under modern F1 constraints, the veteran driver confirmed that the entire operation is aligned on a patient, calculated recovery strategy.

• Read also: Aston Martin breaks silence on Alonso’s F1 future

“I trust my team and we are in this together. Obviously, we take one of the hardest parts of the situation because we race every week and we face the media every week and we jump in the car tomorrow. And we are very uncompetitive,” Alonso admitted candidly.

“But our team and our leaders, they took the decision in Australia to wait until it was worth making an upgraded package for cost-efficient and things like that. And we all agree on that.“We are all waiting on that and we wait in the best manner possible.”

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via X and Facebook