Fernando Alonso thinks nothing positive came out of Aston Martin’s best result of the year in Monaco - with the weekend exposing another “chronic” weakness in its car.

Aston Martin had hoped that the tight and twisty nature of the Monte Carlo street circuit would give it an opportunity to do better, as it would not be held back by a lack of power from its Honda engine.

However, the team was given a reality check about the state of its current package as Alonso and team-mate Lance Stroll both struggled with gearbox downshift issues, a lack of drivability and handling woes.

The pair qualified on the back row before Alonso managed to push his way forward in the race and finish 11th on the road – prior to Sergio Perez’s post-race penalty for being out of his grid position.

That left Alonso 10th in the classification to secure his and Aston Martin's first point of the 2026 campaign.

Speaking before the confirmation of Perez’s drop, Alonso was clear though that there was little reason to be happy about how things had gone over the weekend.

He suggested that Monaco had been a case of another wake-up call for Aston Martin that its issues were about far more than just its power unit.

“Zero positives from this weekend,” explained Alonso. “We've been racing in very different circuits so far this year. All of them were clear for us in terms of understanding some of our weaknesses.

“In Australia, we found our engine was very down. In China, we found our energy was very down. In Monaco, we found our chassis is down. In Miami, we found that our gearbox was very bad. I think every circuit exposed some of our weaknesses in the car.

“But the good thing is that that is a very good understanding on what action is needed in each of the areas.”

A fresh chronic issue

With Monaco not being such a power-sensitive circuit, Aston Martin ending up at the back of the grid was proof of just how much room for improvement it needs to find with its chassis too.

Things were not helped by the emergence of a balance problem that Alonso and Stroll were exposed to in the low-speed corners

Aston Martin ambassador Pedro de la Rosa revealed the team had been caught by surprise by just how bad things were.

“We were expecting to be a bit better here, but we found a very, very severe mid-corner understeer in the low-speed,” he said.

“The team has tried to cure [it], making all possible changes on set-up, but it is something more fundamental than the set-up change. We didn't experience this understeer as bad as it has been here in any other race, so that has caught us out.”

While alert that the understeer problem could manifest itself in the future, de la Rosa had some hope that this was something isolated to Monaco’s unique characteristics.

“It's something that, as we haven't seen in circuits that are very different to Monaco, we remain confident [it won’t return],” he said.

“But we should first of all analyse all the data, and if we find again this problem then we will have more tools actually to work on them.

“I would be surprised if we find this level of chronic mid-corner understeer in any other track, because there are no tracks like Monaco, and also this year the soft tyre has been even pretty hard for this circuit.”

Waiting on upgrades

Aston Martin has elected to hold fire on introducing any major upgrades until engine partner Honda is ready to introduce developments that can bring a much-needed step forward on the power front.

Alonso said that all the issues that had been exposed so far were being worked on, so it was just a case of waiting for the fixes to arrive.

“For the second part of the year, the package that we try to bring all at once is tackling all those problems individually,” he said.

“I have full faith and trust on the team, because our impression and our feeling is that that [upgraded] car will change dramatically what we are facing now. We just need to wait another four or five races of painful results.”

De la Rosa was hopeful that when the upgraded car arrived it would bring a decent step forward.

“We expect to have more grip and more power,” he said. “F1 is about physics. It's not that complicated, in a way. To get that is complicated, but actually what you need is simple.”