How long before Fernando Alonso and Honda fall out...again?

Fernando Alonso's patience has proven to be thin time and time again throughout his legendary F1 career, and his current predicament at Aston Martin will surely be beginning to bug him.

After joining the team in 2023, the pairing seemed like a match made in heaven for the driver who has not claimed a race victory since the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix, immediately thrust into a car which saw him able to claim eight podiums across the season, and arguably only not picking up a race win because of Adrian Newey's Red Bull rocket ship.

What has followed has been two years of anonymity for the Silverstone-based outfit. But all was ok, because 2026 was coming. The 2026 season that would see a complete overhaul of the F1 regulations, the 2026 that would see a brand new power unit partnership with Honda beginning, the 2026 that would see the first Aston Martin car designed by F1 legend Newey.

Before the season has even started, however, we are already suggesting that Aston Martin's 2026 season is going to be another write off just like the two that have come before it, and there is already talk of a potential Alonso retirement, with his current contract in the sport expiring at the end of this year.

The problem? Honda. Again for Alonso.

READ MORE: Alonso retirement 'very likely' as Aston Martin crisis deepens

Honda's notorious McLaren partnership

It took a lot for Alonso to swallow his pride and return to McLaren in 2015, after a one-season spell there in 2007 that was filled with off-track controversy and infighting.

But he did so having come to the conclusion that Ferrari were not going to give him a car capable of challenging for the championship in the hybrid era. He ripped up the contract that was supposed to run until the end of the 2016 season, and became Jenson Button's team-mate at McLaren in an all-star driver lineup.

Honda's return to McLaren no doubt would have turned his head too. The Japanese car manufacturer won four consecutive constructors' championships with McLaren in the 80s and 90s, with another F1 legend in Ayrton Senna claiming all three of his drivers' championships in Honda-powered McLaren cars.

2015 pre-season testing instantly showed that Honda had not built a hybrid power unit capable of challenging for the title this time around, however. The McLaren cars were breaking down all over the place, in a similar style to Aston Martin at this year's pre-season testing in Bahrain.

The partnership yielded a ninth-place constructors' championship finish in 2015, with reasons for this including Honda lacking experience and data with the new regulations, as well as there being fundamental issues with McLaren's 'size zero' chassis concept.

McLaren went on to finish an improved sixth in 2016, before falling to ninth again in 2017. In that three-season spell, two-time world champion Alonso did not pick up a single podium.

And the Spaniard made his feelings about the Honda power unit well known. At the 2015 Japanese Grand Prix, Alonso called it a 'GP2 engine', claiming that the performance was 'embarrassing', and suggesting that they were 30km/h slower than their rivals.

In 2017, Alonso once again went for Honda, claiming the McLaren power unit partner's new engine had 'no power and no reliability' - another scathing assessment which led to repercussions for the Spaniard.

For his 2019 attempt to win the Indy500, Honda blocked Alonso from using one of their engines, putting the brakes on a potential Alonso/Andretti Autosport reunion which had taken the Spaniard so close to an Indy500 victory in 2017.

It was clear that there was tension between the two parties, but Alonso revealed a few years later that he regretted the outbursts about Honda's engines.

Alonso and Honda reunite

In 2023, during Alonso's first season with Aston Martin, it was announced that Aston Martin and Honda would be working together from the 2026 season onwards, in time for the new regulations.

Alonso's comments at the time were some of positivity, particularly after having seen Honda return to winning ways with Red Bull during a highly-successful partnership with the Milton Keynes-based outfit.

"It’s going to be no problem at all from my side," he said. "I know that it didn’t work out last time, 2015, ’16, ’17. But they proved that they have now a competitive package. They won the championship in ’21. They won a championship in ’22 and most likely will win the championship in ’23.

"They have now a very strong package. It’s a new set of regulations, but I think it will be a very exciting project for sure."

But the early days of the Aston Martin-Honda link up has been more the McLaren era than the Red Bull era.

The team put in the fewest laps of all 11 outfits during pre-season testing, while Alonso's team-mate Lance Stroll suggested that the team were four seconds off the front of the grid.

Time will tell as to whether Alonso's ire will be directed at Aston Martin or Honda as the 2026 season progresses, but if he is racing around at the back of the pack with the new Cadillac team, then there's no doubt that the 45-year-old will not be happy.

He's running out of time to be able to claim a third world championship title, and he needs a car that is immediately at the front of the pack, rather than another long-term project.

READ MORE: Six laps and home - How Aston Martin called time early on F1 testing nightmare

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