Aston debuts Spa upgrade but Alonso sees eyes on 2026

Fernando Alonso says Aston Martin’s focus has largely moved on to 2026, even as the team brings what could be its final major upgrade of the current season to Spa-Francorchamps.

Despite the compressed Sprint weekend format and forecasts of rain limiting track time, Aston has introduced new components in Belgium.

Whether the parts are raced will depend on Friday’s sole practice session, but Alonso welcomed the early delivery.

"First, I think the priority is to understand if the new parts are bringing performance," he said Thursday. "Always on a Sprint weekend it's difficult to achieve that with only one free practice.

"Maybe the weather is not helping on that side. So, that will be the first priority. Then, yeah, try to score points if we can again this weekend."

The 43-year-old Spaniard said he doesn’t know why Spa was chosen for the debut but suggested the parts were likely ready ahead of schedule.

"I think the team is trying to bring the upgrades whenever they're ready," said Alonso. "Probably this was forecasted for Budapest or later in the season and they managed to bring it a little bit earlier."

"There's no guarantee that we will race with it if we have no time to test it, but at the same time, I think it was welcome - that there is this push from everyone in the factory to bring the new parts as soon as possible."

With parc ferme rules easing after the Sprint, Alonso said the team has flexibility depending on how Friday plays out.

"If we do and we opt to race with it, we will have a better feel after the weekend. If we cannot test it in FP1, maybe we opt not to fit it for qualifying," he explained

. "At the same time, I think we have the parc ferme open after the Sprint race, so we could use the first part of the weekend as a test and then race on Sunday with the best spec."

But beyond Spa, Alonso confirmed that Aston Martin’s long-term thinking is already deep into the 2026 regulation era.

"Actually, I think 80% of the focus is already on 2026, in a way," he said. "Not only on the engineers and the design team. It's also the drivers' head, apart maybe from the two McLaren drivers. This year is going to change very little, I think, in the second part."