Aston Martin racer Fernando Alonso is still yet to score a single point after the opening three rounds of the 2025 season and he expects a ‘difficult’ Bahrain Grand Prix next.
Formula 1 heads straight from Suzuka to Sakhir this week with round four the second part of the first triple-header of the term. Alonso will be trying to get off the mark at the Bahrain GP as point-less trips to Australia, China and Japan returned his worst start to a year since 2017.
Alonso at least finished the Japanese GP on Sunday to record his first classified result of the campaign after the 43-year-old’s retirements in Australia (crash) and China (brakes). The Spaniard hit the finish line in P11 and was just 2.804 seconds from scoring a point at Suzuka.
Aston Martin will not bring ‘significant upgrades’ to Fernando Alonso’s car before Imola
Aston Martin also failed to score a point for the first time in the 2025 F1 season at Suzuka as Lance Stroll finished last as the only driver to be lapped. The 26-year-old was the only driver to do a two-stop strategy and would not add to his P6 and P9 finishes in Australia and China.
Stroll bowed out in Q1 for the fourth-straight year at Suzuka, too, while Alonso qualified just P13 after wringing all he native could from the AMR25. And their form is unlikely to improve anytime soon as Aston Martin will have effectively the same car in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
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That is according to Marca, which reports that Aston Martin do not plan to bring ‘significant’ upgrades to the AMR25 until at least the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola on May 16-18. They see the Miami Grand Prix two weeks before the first European race as a ‘lost weekend’.
F1 will enjoy a one-week break following the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix next weekend before a quick stop in America for the Miami GP ahead of another week off. But as Miami is also an F1 Sprint weekend, only getting one practice session deters Aston Martin from taking upgrades.
Fernando Alonso expects a ‘difficult’ Bahrain Grand Prix for Aston Martin
Aston Martin not planning on bringing any substantial upgrades to the AMR25 over the next three rounds will surely disappoint Alonso. The Spaniard has only failed to score a point over four consecutive rounds once since 2018 coming amid rounds 19-22 of the 2024 campaign.
Matching that four-round point-less period is now very much on the cards at the Bahrain GP this weekend. Marca also quotes Alonso conceding that he expects Aston Martin will have a ‘difficult’ race in Bahrain as the Sakhir track left them with ‘doubts’ after testing in February.
“With what we learned in the first three races, we’re here now to confront some things we had doubts about in testing,” Alonso said. “So, we’ll use practice for that there and I think it will be a difficult finish again.
“But in difficult finishes we’re going to keep trying. So, we’re not going to give up, for sure.”
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