Study Finds the Aston Martin Honda Is Fernando Alonso’s Worst F1 Car

2026 is not turning into the season of hope that many had anticipated for Fernando Alonso. The Aston Martin AMR26, and especially its Honda engine, have proven to be a disaster that sits light-years away from the fastest. But the big question is: Is this Aston Martin the worst car Fernando Alonso has ever driven? We already know the answer.

According to a study conducted by the experts at Delta Data, the Aston Martin Honda is the worst car Alonso has ever driven in Formula 1. Or, at least, the one farthest from the best. Honda has produced an engine even worse than the one it built for McLaren in 2015, and Alonso is paying the price.

Aston Martin, more than three seconds behind the leaders

Fernando Alonso has historically shown poor judgment in choosing teams, and even with the Aston Martin’s abysmal performance there were doubts about whether it was the worst car of his life. But those doubts no longer exist. A Delta Data study states that Alonso has never driven anything worse than his current Aston Martin.

According to this study, the current Aston Martin drags down the performance of the best car on the grid, which is the Mercedes, by 3.6%. A monstrous figure that not only positions it as the worst car of 2026, behind even Cadillac, but as the worst car Fernando Alonso has driven in his enormous Formula 1 career.

In fact, the Aston Martin is the worst by a wide margin. Because the second-worst car Fernando Alonso would have driven would be the 2018 McLaren, already equipped with Renault engines, which was 2.2% off the best. The worst McLaren-Honda is the 2015 one, which shows a 2.0% deficit compared to the Mercedes, which were the fastest at that time.

Another intriguing statistic from the analysis is that Fernando Alonso has never had the best car on the grid, not even when he won his two world titles. In 2005 his Renault was 0.2% slower than the McLaren, which he beat partly due to the Mercedes engine’s reliability issues that caused Kimi Räikkönen to lose many points.

In 2006, the Renault was 0.09% slower than the Ferrari. Barely anything, but slightly behind in the overall tally. In 2007, with McLaren Mercedes, it was the closest Alonso ever came to having the best car, but he finished 0.05% behind the Ferrari. The amazing thing is that in 2010 and 2012 he nearly won the world championship with cars that were 0.4% and 0.3% worse respectively.

The saddest part is that since 2014 Alonso has only had two cars with a deficit under 1% of the best: the 2023 and 2024 Aston Martins. Very painful.

Images | Aston Martin