Aston Martin hits back row as Stroll ends Alonso run

Lance Stroll qualified 21st for the Spanish Grand Prix, 0.057 seconds ahead of Fernando Alonso in 22nd, ending Alonso’s 42-race run of beating his Aston Martin team-mate in grand prix qualifying as the team locked out the back row in Barcelona.

That intra-team shift was the headline on paper, but the bigger problem for Aston Martin was its complete lack of pace at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. Both AMR26s were stranded at the rear, with one account putting them roughly a second slower than the Cadillacs that secured 19th and 20th on the grid.

It was the first time Stroll had outqualified Alonso in a full grand prix grid-setting session since the 2024 British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Stroll, though, had little interest in the statistic. Asked by media including RacingNews365 whether ending the streak meant anything to him, Stroll said: “No. I don’t care.” When asked if it would matter more further up the grid, he replied: “I don’t know. I don’t give a shit.”

Mike Krack, Aston Martin team principal, said the result reflected what the team had expected from the weekend. “We knew when we arrived this weekend that this circuit would expose our true pace, and that is reflected in our qualifying result,” he said. “Both drivers and the team gave everything today, but we have to accept that this is our current position and do what we can in tomorrow’s race.”

Alonso made clear after the session that the issue was not losing out to Stroll, but the scale of Aston Martin’s technical shortcomings. Speaking to journalists in comments reported by As, Alonso said: “We have a terrible engine, the worst. We have terrible energy deployment. We have gearbox problems and aerodynamic problems. We have the worst car and the worst engine.”

He also suggested Barcelona was no one-off, adding that Aston Martin’s current direction would leave it in the same position at the next round. “We have been very clear, in the second part of the year a new car and a new engine will arrive,” Alonso said. “We chose this strategy and even in Austria in two weeks we will be last in qualifying.”