HONDA The Power of Dreams

Qualifying|17th|1 min 18.908s

Qualifying|19th|1 min 19.072s

Round 19 of the 2026 F1™ season took place at the Mexico City Grand Prix. The venue, Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, is located 2,240 m above sea level, making it the circuit with the lowest air density on the Grand Prix calendar.

Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team (AMAF1) fielded reserve driver Jak Crawford in place of Lance Stroll during Friday’s first free practice session (FP1). Although a car problem interrupted his running and limited his track time, Crawford completed his fourth FP1 appearance of the season, allowing AMAF1 to fulfill its requirement to field a rookie driver twice in each car.

With AMAF1 and Honda having prepared the car and power unit for the high-altitude conditions, Fernando Alonso showed promising form in free practice, finishing seventh in FP1, 12th in FP2 and 14th in FP3 before heading into qualifying.

Qualifying for Round 19, the Mexico City GP, took place on Saturday, October 31. Q1 began at 3:00 pm local time in sunny conditions, with an air temperature of 26°C and a track temperature of 49°C.

During the 18-minute Q1 session, Alonso made his first qualifying run on a set of soft tires and recorded a strong time of 1 min 18.908s. After a cooldown lap, he attempted another flying lap on the same tires, but a problem with the car forced him to stop. An issue with the power unit cooling system brought Alonso’s qualifying session to an early end.

Lance Stroll used two sets of tires for his qualifying runs. He recorded 1 min 20.167s on his first set before improving to 1 min 19.072s on his second.

Alonso finished Q1 in 18th and Stroll in 20th, with neither AMAF1 driver able to advance to Q2. However, following the disqualification of a car ahead, their final qualifying positions were revised to 17th for Alonso and 19th for Stroll.

“It was a frustrating way to end what had been looking like a promising Qualifying. The car felt good, and we seemed to be in the fight for a place in Q2.

“Unfortunately, an engine issue meant we had to stop, and there was nothing more we could do at that point. We will look into exactly what happened, but with the cooling challenges we are facing, tomorrow is going to be difficult.

“We will do what we can and keep pushing as a team.”

“We have been struggling a bit here all weekend, mainly with the car balance. I also feel something is not quite right at the rear, and we are also struggling with a lot of engine braking issues.

“We don't really understand why yet, so hopefully we can find some learnings ahead of tomorrow.

“I think the race is going to be quite difficult for us, especially in terms of cooling the car.”

“During FP1 on Jak’s car, we had a suspected ERS issue, so we stopped the car immediately and replaced the battery ready for Lance in the second practice session. The turn around in the tight time frame is testament to the hard work of the HRC and Aston Martin Aramco mechanics.

“Mexico is always challenging for the power unit, especially under these new regulations. As we predicted, we have observed some turbo lag, so we checked the turbocharger’s behavior extensively in the sessions today. We can see from the data that there is further room to improve ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying.

“On the engine side, combustion is as anticipated, so we will focus on optimizing drivability and reducing turbo lag.”

“After FP2, our HRC engineers trackside and in Sakura analyzed the data for qualifying today. And in final practice we found some drivability plus some turbo lag areas to improve upon, which we modified before quali.

“Unfortunately, on Fernando’s car during qualifying, we saw abnormal signals on the water systems and stopped on track. We will therefore replace some components for the race.

“We will carry out this work tonight and prepare for tomorrow. Traffic conditions will be important, so we will prepare options to manage this as well as power unit temperatures.”