Fernando Alonso will start the race from sixth place on the grid at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the final race of the 2025 Formula 1 season. That’s why the big smile that spread across his face after qualifying on Saturday was no surprise. Although his expectations aren’t too high, he’s looking forward to enjoying the race and staying out of trouble.
After a problematic start to the weekend, Alonso surprised with his speed in qualifying. “Yeah, I’m really happy. To be honest, P6 was a little unexpected,” he admits and explains: “We had some concerns about this route. As you know, slow corners have been our weakness all season.”
“So we didn’t arrive particularly confident. And to be honest, the car didn’t feel particularly good yesterday either. There was a lot of understeer and a lot of problems in the slow corners. But we rebuilt the car overnight,” said the spearhead of the Aston Martin team.
“We were brave with some experiments we tried overnight and this morning the car felt good. So we kept this set-up for qualifying. To be honest, the car was more competitive than expected. I’m happy for the team,” said Alonso.
The nighttime risk has not only improved the two-time Formula 1 world champion’s power for qualifying, but should also make Sunday’s Grand Prix more exciting. “With the car we had yesterday, we couldn’t turn into the corners. Now we can. That will help prevent us from crashing,” grins Alonso.
While many fans will be focused on the title battle between Max Verstappen (pole-sitter), Lando Norris (P2 on the grid) and Oscar Piastri (P3 on the grid), Alonso admits he hasn’t thought about the tactics yet.
Verstappen’s possible braking tactics have not yet been thought about
In theory, it could happen that Verstappen slows down the field – similar to what Lewis Hamilton did at the 2016 season finale when he fought for the world title against his then Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg.
“I haven’t thought about that!” says Alonso and adds with a grin: “But who knows? That’s interesting. I mean, I haven’t thought about that yet. Now I have something to work on tonight. But even if I do [Verstappen] If you drive slower, sometimes that’s still not enough to catch up with him. So he would have to drive much slower.”
“But yes, we will try to run our race and if the strategy offers more scope for different things, then we will try to react to that,” said Alonso, for whom something else is in the foreground.
In the 2025 Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship, Aston Martin is seven points ahead of Haas and twelve points ahead of Sauber in the fight for seventh place overall before the season finale.
Theoretically, even Racing Bulls – twelve points ahead in sixth place – is still within reach of Aston Martin, but Alonso doesn’t talk about that at all when he says: “Of course we’re competing for the constructors’ championship with Haas and Sauber. There’s no other incentive for us tomorrow. We’ll try to control that.”
Alonso expects “fantastic show”
The Aston Martin driver from Spain will follow the fight on the various large screens around the race track. “It’s a very simple race track,” grins Alonso.
“In Turn 3 you have a screen right in your field of vision. In Turn 5 you have one on the inside, in Turn 7 you have one on the outside. In Turn 9 there are even two, one at the entrance and one at the exit. So there are a lot of screens. I think it’s going to be a fantastic show.”
While Alonso watches the fight at the top, he hopes that he himself doesn’t become a direct part of it: “I hope to be as far away from the fight as possible. Well, not too far, because I want to score points. But I don’t want to be in the news on Monday.”