Fernando Alonso reveals 'wild' Aston Martin Bahrain GP and being faster than Lewis Hamilton

Fernando Alonso has revealed he enjoyed the start of the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, despite a gamble on the soft tyres that didn't pay off.

After a delayed start, and then an aborted start following rain chaos in Sepang, a long wait resulted in the track starting to dry in many places including the start/finish straight.

For the start of the race, this led to a split in strategies with many on the grid opting for the intermediate tyre to deal with any wet spots on the track, while others gambled on the slick tyre, hoping that within a couple of laps it would prove to be the correct tyre to be on.

However, the track was a lot wetter in places than many expected, causing those on the slick tyre to drop to the back of the pack once the grand prix finally got underway.

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Bittersweet for Alonso

Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso was among those, but having an even harder time of finding grip on the wet track were the Ferraris of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.

Alonso revealed that while it was not the correct decision to start on the softs, he felt comfortable with the car and enjoyed blasting past the drivers of his former team.

He told Sky Sports: "Yeah, it was a fun race for sure. A lot of things going on since the beginning, you know, with the red flags, and then we wait a lot on the pint lane.

"So we decided to start with the slick tyre. So obviously, it was not the right decision, but you know, at that point felt good.

"We were even faster than the Ferraris, versus Hamilton. I was pulling away from him. So at that point, I thought, 'ok, you know, this is getting getting wild'.

“But obviously we were very slow with the slick, and thanks to the safety car, everything regrouped and started a new race from that point onwards.

Rare Aston Martin points

Alonso recovered to eventually finish in eighth place at Sepang, a season high for the Aston Martin team who have had a turbulent 2026 with Adrian Newey and Honda's first car.

The two-time world champion praised his team for taking advantage of a rare weekend where scoring points was a possibility.

“So yeah, happy for the team. There are not many weekends where we can score points, and in those weekends, we cannot have any mistake, and we cannot lose the opportunities. So we executed that today. So I'm happy for the team and for the points.”

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