Is Fernando Alonso the unluckiest driver on the grid? He certainly thinks so

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Fernando Alonso came home 15th in Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix after qualifying 11th, which led the Aston Martin racer to slam his bad luck over the 2025 Formula 1 season. He said unexpected occurrences that shake up the field only come along when the team is on form.

The Spaniard qualified just outside the top 10 in Baku, ahead of the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton and three positions clear of team-mate Lance Stroll. However, a false start from McLaren’s Oscar Piastri in front led Alonso to jump the gun as well, which saw him lose places off the line and pick up a five-second time penalty.

“In those moments every movement that is happening in front of you, obviously sometimes you react and, unfortunately, I reacted to Oscar,” the 44-year-old explained after the race. “But yeah, I don’t think that it did change my race at all. We were at a very slow pace and the final position I think is exactly the same.”

The slow pace of the Aston Martin AMR25 in Azerbaijan was attributed to the layout of the Baku circuit, with Alonso claiming earlier in the weekend that the “good downforce and low drag” required to tie together a lap of the track was “not our strength”.

Therefore, if the Spaniard had any hope of moving through the pack to make up for his race start blunder, he had to pray for a spate of retirements, red flags and safety cars to rival the Baku qualifying session on Saturday. That didn’t happen, which led Alonso to once again lament his bad luck over the course of the 2025 season.

“Sure, like always, we have the worst car and nothing happens. No safety car, no yellow flags, no reliability problems,” he said. “It only happens when we are at the front. But this is the trend of this year, and we have to take it.”

Fernando Alonso crashed in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix

Photo by: Lubomir Asenov / Motorsport Images

This echoed similar complaints made by the double world champion earlier in the season. Alonso claimed the timing of the safety car at Zandvoort was “unlucky” at a circuit that he thought posed an “opportunity” for the team. He also blamed his bad luck for a lack of points at the races at Imola and Monaco.

In fact, his 11th-place finish at Imola led Alonso to profess over team radio that, “We are so unlucky. Everything is wrong for us this year”.

This apparent bad luck has left the Spaniard down on points for the season, wallowing 14th in the standings with 32 championship points to his name – two fewer than team-mate Stroll in 11th.

But just how unlucky has the Aston Martin racer really been over the course of 2025? He’s so far picked up four DNFs, with technical issues causing three of them: a brake failure in China, power unit issues in Monaco and suspension damage in Italy. In Australia, however, the experienced campaigner spun off in drying conditions – initially blaming the crash on gravel on the track. His team-mate, however, has suffered no retirements, but did sit out the Spanish Grand Prix due to a wrist injury.

Alonso was also caught out by the timing of the safety car in Zandvoort, as he had already stopped for new rubber, and a virtual safety car in Imola, which gave his rivals a cheap stop ahead and dropped him out of the points. Similar issues befell Stroll, with the Canadian blaming race interruptions for a lack of points at Imola and Spa.

For Alonso, these instances have mostly arrived at tracks that he says are better suited to the AMR25, which he believes has hampered his results over the course of the 2025 season. However, Formula 1 still has seven races to go before the end of the year, and Alonso isn’t counting his squad out at some of these tracks just yet.