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The new AMR26, set for its competitive debut during Friday's first free practice at the Budapest circuit, has become a beacon of hope for Aston Martin's embattled 2026  1 campaign-yet Alonso is quick to temper optimism.

Aston Martin has endured a difficult season, with Alonso's solitary point in Monaco serving as the team's only highlight so far, enabling them to edge ahead of Cadillac in the constructors' standings. However, the British outfit has consistently lagged behind the newcomers, with their last qualifying triumph over a Cadillac driver coming at the Canadian Grand Prix. The team's struggles were epitomised in Spa, where both Alonso and teammate Lance Stroll suffered their worst qualifying of the year, finishing over two seconds adrift of Cadillac's Sergio Perez.

Addressing the mounting anticipation around the B-spec car, Alonso dismissed talk of miracle gains: "I'm not thinking too much about numbers, positions or something like that, because if we go back to the last five races, I think we had very different gaps to the midfield," Alonso stated. He pointed to the harsh reality of Spa, noting, "We had the guy in front of us 2.1 seconds ahead, so there is no package in the world that will give you that amount of time. Probably the position would not change if you ran the updated car in Spa one week ago, so that's how we need to treat it. It will change circuit by circuit."

With the Budapest circuit potentially offering some relief-"Power is not the most important point here, which obviously helps"-Alonso remains pragmatic about expectations. "We will update the car, but not the engine yet, so we still have something that we need to overcome. I'm more interested in understanding the direction of the car, whether we are on a good path and whether we finally unlock the performance," he said.

The B-spec AMR26 marks only the first phase in a two-step upgrade plan, with improvements to the   power unit scheduled for the Dutch Grand Prix. Yet Alonso insists that the fundamental approach remains unchanged: "We go to every race trying to maximise what we have in our hands. We're here to win races and to fight for championships. We didn't start the season that way, and we will not be that way either, because we are just in the process of understanding these regulations and getting onto a good path, let's say, with the development of the car."

Reflecting on the team's strategy, Alonso acknowledged, "I think for the first 12 races, all the teams opted for a different strategy, the more conventional one, to bring two or three tenths of a second every two or three races, and then you end up with one second or one and a half seconds by race 10 or race 12. We didn't do that, so we fell a little bit behind everyone else on the grid, and now we will try to catch up all at once. But I think it doesn't change your natural position at the end on Sundays. I'm obviously optimistic."

Alonso concluded by praising the Aston Martin squad's resilience: "I'm very proud of the team and of the job that they've done since the Bahrain test, when we understood that we had a problem and we had to fix a few weaknesses on the car. I think this is the first step towards those fixes, but there are more to come."