Racing
© Jonathan Borba
Aston Martin came away from the Miami Grand Prix with its first double finish of the 2026 season after finally reducing the vibration problems that had crippled the AMR26, but the team left Florida admitting the bigger issue now is pace.
Fernando Alonso said it was "good to have both cars finish the race for the first time this season," calling Miami a useful weekend even as the results underlined how far Aston Martin still has to go. He said the team had made "clear progress in reliability" and could use the extra running to gather more data before Canada, but added: "We are still not where we want to be." His conclusion was blunt. "Now our focus turns to performance. We need to keep working and be patient as a team."
Lance Stroll drew the same distinction between what was fixed and what was not. The Aston Martin driver said "It's the first time this season both cars finished a race, so that's a positive to take from Miami," adding that the team "managed to get more milage in the car" and "experienced less vibrations this weekend." But he also admitted that "in hindsight, our tyre strategy didn't work out" and said the next job is obvious: "From a reliability perspective we made a step in the right direction. We now need to work on our performance related issues, there are lots of areas for us to improve on."
That was also the view from the pit wall. Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack said the team's priority over the break had been "to work with Honda to improve the PU's vibrations into the chassis," and he said "that work has paid off and we have taken an important step forward on reliability this weekend." Krack did not dress it up as a competitive breakthrough, though, saying "there's clearly more we need to do together to improve our pace and unlock the potential of this package."
Miami had been approached as a test of whether Honda's countermeasures would at least return the car to something like normal operation. Honda trackside general manager and chief engineer Shintaro Orihara had said before the weekend that the company had "made some progress" after an intense period of work with Aston Martin in Japan and the UK, while warning that it would not produce a visible power-unit performance gain on track. Alonso had also made clear before running that the team expected reliability solutions first and performance later.
By Saturday, he was already describing the vibration issue as much improved. Alonso said after qualifying that it was "a relief that the PU vibration issues have improved which was a big focus over the break," and later stated even more clearly that the vibrations were gone and that the car "behaves normal now." He called that the main positive of the weekend because it removed the reliability fears that had shaped Aston Martin's opening races.
The catch was that fixing one problem only exposed the scale of the next one. Alonso said after the race that "reliability is better. We had no problems, the vibrations are better but the performance is similar to Japan," a line that captured Aston Martin's Miami weekend. The car could finally run properly, but it was still stuck near the back.
His own weekend showed that the team is not yet clear of mechanical trouble either. Alonso said qualifying was badly affected by a gearbox issue that made the car "impossible to drive," with random downshifts, no acceleration out of corners and inconsistent behavior under braking. After the race he said there had been "something very strange with the gearbox or the engine, all weekend," and warned Aston Martin needs to fix "this situation with the gearbox" before Canada, where heavier braking zones will punish that weakness more severely.
That leaves Aston Martin with a narrow gain from Miami: the car is more reliable, but not yet meaningfully faster. Alonso has already warned not to expect a quick turnaround, saying Aston Martin will not have upgrades until the summer and that "we cannot expect anything else in Canada." For a team that finally got both cars to the flag, Miami mattered because it restored a baseline. It also confirmed that the real fight, and the harder one, starts now.