Fernando Alonso stays with Aston Martin for a 24th F1 season
The only driver to score for Aston Martin this year wants another season
Aston Martin confirmed on 29 September that Fernando Alonso will race for the team in 2027, alongside Lance Stroll, whose contract was extended at the same time. Alonso is 45, turns 46 in July and will start his 24th Formula 1 season, 26 years after his debut with Minardi in 2001. The deal ends a summer of speculation that included a possible move to endurance racing.
Fernando Alonso has 440 grands prix and 32 wins behind him
Alonso has started 440 grands prix and won 32 of them, with world titles for Renault in 2005 and 2006. His last victory came at the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix with Ferrari, and his last podium was third place in São Paulo in November 2023. That was the first season of his Aston Martin spell, after he left Alpine: six podiums in his first eight races and eight in total. Since then the team has been overtaken in development, and 2026 has been its hardest year yet.
Aston Martin has 3 points after 15 rounds, all scored by Alonso
Aston Martin is tenth of eleven teams on three points, ahead only of newcomer Cadillac, in its first season as Honda's works partner and with the first car designed under Adrian Newey. Alonso scored them with tenth in Monaco and ninth at Zandvoort; Stroll has none. Honda hands its engine programme to software chief Yoichiro Fukao on 1 October, and Alonso's own reasoning rests on that: there are no guarantees the engine will be fixed next year, he said, but the changes at Honda made sense, so he has faith.
The 2027 F1 rules cut electric deployment from 350 kW to 300 kW
Alonso has been the loudest critic of the 2026 regulations, which he called a battery world championship, and the rules are now moving his way. From 2027 fuel flow to the combustion engine rises 5 percent, maximum electric deployment falls from 350 kW to 300 kW and the harvesting limit climbs from 250 kW to 375 kW, with a further step towards combustion power in 2028. Alonso met F1 chief Stefano Domenicali and FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem during the season, and keeping his decision open kept pressure on both.
Aston Martin's Valkyrie hypercar seat stays empty for Alonso in 2027
The new contract also closes the endurance option for next year. Only last week reports had Alonso weighing a factory Valkyrie seat in the World Endurance Championship, where he won the 2018-19 title and Le Mans twice with Toyota. In June he had said the Barcelona round was probably his last race at that circuit, and Barcelona is off the 2027 calendar. Alonso now calls himself committed to the team for the long term, although neither side has said how many seasons the deal covers.
Lance Stroll, 27, starts a ninth year with his father's team
Stroll's extension gives Aston Martin an unchanged line-up for a fifth season. The 27-year-old joined from Williams and will spend a ninth year at the Silverstone team, where his father Lawrence is executive chairman and co-owner. Lawrence Stroll said the short-term focus remains performance, while the long-term aim is still to win. With both cars settled, only four seats on the 2027 grid remain unconfirmed, all of them at Racing Bulls and Haas.
AutoNext Take
Alonso has made the right call, and the reasons are in the rulebook rather than the results table. Last week we wrote that he would rather end his career winning at Le Mans than retiring from another grand prix. He has chosen the harder job instead, and the conditions that frustrated him are changing: 50 kW of electric deployment goes back to combustion, Honda has new engine leadership, and the Newey car has a full winter to mature. A driver who still feels quick has every reason to see that through.
Aston Martin scored three points in its first 15 races of 2026. We expect it to beat its final 2026 total within the first three races of 2027, with Alonso scoring in at least one of them. If the car is still fighting only Cadillac by the time he turns 46 on 29 July, the long-term commitment in his statement will face its first real question.
