HONDA The Power of Dreams

Sprint|17th
Qualifying|19th|1 min 35.203 s

Sprint|18th
Qualifying|21th|1 min 35.995 s

The first Sprint race of the 2026 season took place on March 14 at 11:00 am local time. In Sprint Qualifying held the previous day, Fernando Alonso of the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team (AMAF1) qualified 19th, while Lance Stroll qualified 20th. However, due to a pit-lane start for a car ahead, Alonso started from 18th on the grid and Stroll from 19th.

For the 19-lap Sprint, Alonso selected hard tires while Stroll started on mediums. Stroll made a strong launch and gained three positions on the opening lap to run 16th, although he gradually lost ground over the following laps. By lap eight the positions changed, with Alonso running 18th and Stroll 19th.

On Lap 13, another car stopped on track, bringing out the Safety Car. During this period, Stroll made a pit stop for fresh tires and rejoined in 18th place. Alonso remained on track and moved up to 13th. When the race resumed on Lap 17, Alonso—running without a tire change—was overtaken by cars with fresher tires and dropped back. He ultimately took the checkered flag in 17th, with Stroll finishing 18th.

Qualifying began later that day at 3:00 pm local time under clear skies, with an ambient temperature of 18°C and a track temperature of 32°C.

During the 18-minute Q1 session, Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll ran for the full duration, completing three qualifying attempts using three sets of new tires. Alonso improved his time on each run, recording 1 min 36.338 s, 1 min 35.446 s, and finally 1 min 35.203 s. Stroll also improved progressively with laps of 1 min 37.069 s, 1 min 36.412 s, and 1 min 35.995 s.

Despite these improvements, Alonso finished the session in 19th position and Stroll in 21st, with neither driver progressing beyond Q1.

"I felt like I got everything out of the car in that Qualifying session and I think it was the best that we could manage. It was a trouble-free day for us and we did everything we wanted to do in our programme, but we are simply lacking performance. We will aim to finish the race tomorrow and try to learn more about this package in racing conditions."

"A challenging Qualifying session for me today. I struggled with the balance, suffering with understeer and rear wheel locking which makes the car unpredictable to drive. We need to look at the data to see where we can improve. We are learning with each lap and need to continue building mileage and understanding of this car to get on top of some of the challenges we face."

"Both cars have done more laps here in Shanghai, but we were not able to progress beyond Q1. We continue learning and building our knowledge about this car, which will help us find more performance for the races to come. Both cars have run reliably today and given us important data, but the car is not easy to drive, so we will regroup tonight to see where we can make improvements going forward."

“Yesterday we had a smooth session in free practice where we could build up mileage and gather a lot of information. That helped us to optimize our data for the Sprint and qualifying today. We also covered the full distance in the Sprint race, which shows that we are heading in the right direction. That is a good point for Honda to increase our reliability, and we will keep working hard to continue to improve it. We are seeing good progress.

“As we have mentioned, we introduced new measures to reduce battery vibration in Melbourne, and we ran about 300-400 kilometers in round one. Then we put additional mileage on here in China so that has built up our confidence a bit.

“For tomorrow, we have another 300 kilometres to run, and our target is to complete the full race distance to confirm that our countermeasures work well. Every single lap is important for Honda and Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team.”