Aston Martin insider admits no light at the end of the tunnel yet for F1 crisis team

Pedro de la Rosa has admitted that he doesn't yet see the light at the end of the tunnel for his Aston Martin team.

The team ambassador was picked out for Friday's press conference at the Monaco Grand Prix and, while he insisted that the coming update package will provide a boost, admitted that things are still tricky for Lawrence Stroll's team.

The long-time F1 driver told the assembled press that the team's major updates are set to come 'around the summer', which matches up with Adrian Newey's note that a major update package should be ready just before the summer break.

The team did have one small ray of sunlight poking through the clouds in Monaco though – the penalties and late-race chaos meaning that Fernando Alonso was able to score the team's first point of 2026.

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"Definitely not yet," he said when asked if he could see the light at the end of the tunnel. "We are where we are. It’s a difficult start, especially because we are in a position that we were not expecting to be in.

"However, there are really a lot of things happening behind the scenes in the factory which makes us believe that the upgrades, all the significant changes that we will introduce around the summer, will deliver.

"But we have to talk about what we have right now, and what we have right now is a very difficult car, drivers that are doing their best and they’re doing absolutely an incredible job to drive the car as fast as they can in a reliable and safe way. But it is difficult.

"I would prefer to delay this when we see the light, when the actual upgrades are running and we can rely on facts. My words, we’ve been talking so much about what can be and the light at the end of the tunnel that sometimes it’s a bit just repeating ourselves a bit too much.”

De La Rosa: Reliability issues going in the right direction

One major positive for the team since F1 returned from its enforced April break is that they now start every race expecting to have two cars running at the chequered flag, especially with the seat issues which troubled Alonso in Canada apparently sorted.

Asked directly if the team's 'reliability niggles' were resolved, he added: "Yes. I mean, there are many positives in the sense that the vibration issues are gone, past, it’s gone.

"Fernando did not say anything over the radio after FP1 about his seat, which is positive as well, which means that all the work that has been done on Tuesday at this track, trying to fit his ’25 seat in this ’26 car, has worked. However, Lance was complaining about seat problems, so we still have to fix some other problems, but it is going in the right direction."

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