Why Aston Martin are confident of another strong weekend in Singapore

Aston Martin enjoyed their strongest weekend of the 2026 season in the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia with Fernando Alonso’s storming drive to eighth place, and the hopes are high for another positive week to come.

Chief Trackside Officer Mike Krack says the team are now “quite confident” that they can have another good showing in Singapore. There’s a simple reason for that – the Marina Bay layout has fewer long straights and is less power dependent that some of the tracks that preceded Sepang, and also some of those coming up.

"I think this is a track that should suit us decently,” he said on Thursday. “And it's also a Sprint, which brings its challenges as well. We have the weather unknown always here, so I think it can be an opportunity.

“But you must not do any mistakes. You know that I'm preaching always the same things, because they are always applying. But we are quite confident for this weekend.”

As Krack hinted, the Sprint format also will add an element of randomness with the lack of time to get the set-up right: “I think Fernando was first here last year in FP1, and was fourth in FP2, and we did not have the fourth car or the first car.

“So I think this is a track when you have to go into Qualifying, you have not much practice before. You have to get it right straight away. There are not many support series, so the track will evolve a lot.”

The layout aside, Krack conceded that the abrasive surface in Sepang also contributed to the good result.

“We have obviously looked into it, and we know the strength and the weaknesses of our package,” he said. “What could have happened is that the track was really an outlier in terms of surface. The surface roughness was very high, and with that the grip is low, and the time where you are grip limited is increasing and you move everything to lower speed.

“Now, the car is quite strong in these sections, so I think this helped us in terms of competitivity. I think also maybe other manufacturers had some issues, so I think it's a combination of both.”

Meanwhile, the team arrived in Singapore with the entire squad boosted by the strong Sepang race after a run of retirements and uncompetitive outings.

“Yeah, definitely there is there is a big boost all week,” said Krack. “We travelled together obviously straight away after Malaysia to come here, and then over the over the first days Monday and Tuesday you could see it's a relief – it has been a relief to score good points, and this will help everybody. And now coming to Singapore, we are motivated to continue.”

So can Krack see a change in Alonso when he has a sniff of a good result?

“He's one of these drivers that if there is a chance, he will not miss it,” he said. “You can feel it in the way we do the debriefs, in the way we ask questions, you can see he feels that something is possible. It's difficult to describe, but you feel it.”

A P8 is not much to get excited about for a guy who has seen and done so much, but Alonso himself admitted that in the context of 2026 Sepang was a welcome result.

“Obviously still far away from what we want to achieve,” said the two-time World Champion. “But to be in the points and to have a competitive pace in the race, it was encouraging.

“The whole weekend was a bit better, but it's still what it is. And this year has been painful and still a little bit struggling with the pace and the speed and the straights.

“So yeah, let's see. I think it's going to be circuit dependent. Probably this weekend we could be a little bit in the mix. Some others we will be right at the back. So we need to maximise the good weekends.”

Alonso is adamant that the AMR26 hasn’t got any better – it just worked well at Sepang relative to the competition.

“The car was exactly the same, physically the same, set-up the same, power unit same,” he said. “Everything was the same as Baku five days before Malaysia, and the performance difference was huge.

"So it's not about experimenting with the set-up, or having the car more in the window, or something that we can do on track.

“Unfortunately, it depends so much on the layout and the straights we have on that weekend. So as I said, probably this weekend is a good opportunity.”

Lance Stroll, who made Q2 for the first time at Sepang, also believes that Singapore will be a better weekend for the Aston-Honda package.

“I think so,” said the Canadian. “It's still straights, so we're still going to lose some time on the straights. But yeah, generally a lot more corners than long straights. So on paper, it's good for us.”

And does he agree with Krack’s suggestion that the good showing in Malaysia brought relief to the team?

“It's a temporary relief,” he said. “I think this week will probably be better again. But then we're going to go to the long straights and probably again lose two seconds in engine and stuff like that in the Mexicos and the Austins, and all those places.

“So yeah, try and capitalise on these weekends where we know it's more about car, and less about engine. And then in the background we just have to keep pushing hard for a lot more power and all the stuff we know we need to work on.”