Pedro de la Rosa Reveals the Eye Contact Ritual That Told Him Aston Martin’s Gamble Had Paid Off

• Pedro de la Rosa says Fernando Alonso’s reaction to Aston Martin’s revised car in Hungary was “one of the best moments” of the season
• The team’s representative admits he was “very nervous” about holding back upgrades for a single, riskier B-spec launch
• De la Rosa also opens up on working alongside Adrian Newey and what the Team Principal title actually means at Aston Martin

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A Look That Said Everything

Pedro de la Rosa has opened up on the gamble behind Aston Martin’s revised 2026 car, describing the moment Fernando Alonso first gave his approval as “one of the best moments we’ve had so far” this season.

Aston Martin struggled with reliability and performance through the start of the year, a difficult run that pushed the Silverstone squad to hold back its development and deliver a heavily revised B-spec of the AMR26 at round 11 in Hungary, rather than spread the upgrades across multiple weekends the way most of the grid does.

“Everything Worked as Planned”

Speaking on the latest episode of the official F1 podcast Beyond The Grid, De la Rosa admitted he had no way of knowing how much performance the changes would bring until the car actually ran.

“I would lie if I said I was not very nervous because you are expecting, you are hoping, you’ve been waiting a long time, and then the car just starts,” he said. “I looked at the car and the side pods were so small, the radiators look the smallest I’ve ever seen in my life.

“And I thought, OK, the aero numbers are promising, but maybe the cooling is not enough. Or you start thinking about many other scenarios, because I’ve been in most of the most unwanted scenarios in F1. But everything worked as planned.”

What followed was a ritual De la Rosa has relied on for years to read Alonso’s mood without waiting for a radio message.

“Then after the installation lap, you looked around and the people were relieved because everything was working as expected,” he said. “With Fernando, I know him so much that we look at the eyes. I always try to be at the front of the car when he comes in after a run. He looks at me, I look at him, and I know exactly what he’s thinking.

“I don’t even need to listen to the radio. And his eyes look like, yes, it’s working. Sometimes we’ve had upgrades in the past and I look at him and he immediately doesn’t want to look at my eyes. When he tries to refuse the eye contact, I know we are in trouble. But that time he looked and he was just like, yeah, it’s there, it’s there.

“It was a very exciting moment. You always have to focus on things you can change, you can do, you can improve. That was, OK, not where we wanted to be, I repeat again, but it was one of the best moments we’ve had so far this season.”

Never a Play for Alonso’s Future

With ongoing speculation around whether Alonso will stay at Aston Martin, De la Rosa said the upgrade timing had nothing to do with trying to sway the Spaniard’s decision.

“I think that decision was never based on if we lost anyone or anything,” he said. “I think that Fernando, whatever his decision will be, you have to believe in a project, not if the car is quick on the next race.

“I think Fernando is so wise, he’s learned so much, that it’s either you believe in the project or you don’t. It’s not whether we managed to improve the car for the summer break as we were expecting.”

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What a Team Principal Actually Does

Aston Martin’s difficulties early in the year surprised plenty of observers given the team named Adrian Newey, one of the sport’s most successful car designers, as Team Principal for this season. De la Rosa said Newey has settled in well, though results have not followed yet, and offered his own read on what the role really involves at Aston Martin.

“I must say that Team Principal is a title,” he said. “It’s not a job description. Adrian has said it many times. We are fortunate in the team having Mike Krack as well, an experienced Team Principal, now chief track operations.

“But when Adrian is not at the racetrack, Mike acts like a Team Principal. I think we have a very luxurious situation where we have people working in different areas covering for when Adrian is not here. Other teams have different structures.

“It’s quite ambiguous now what a Team Principal job description really is. In my time, you had a Team Principal that was taking all the decisions. But now you have a Team Principal and normally you also have a CEO on top of them. I think that we have a very good structure. As long as Adrian feels comfortable and competitive, we’re in good hands.”

Chipping Away at the Gap

Aston Martin sit 10th in the constructors’ championship with three points, and De la Rosa acknowledged Formula 1 is unforgiving of slow progress.

“I think that we are in the upward trend,” he said. “I’ve said it in Australia this year, when we started this, we were nowhere. But all we need to do is improve and never stop improving.

“Obviously, our strategy was different. We didn’t improve until the summer, but we’ve made a big step. We are now in a position we cannot stop. It’s just a race of time. The people have done a better job than us. That’s why they’re winning. We just have to slowly chip away all this difference. That’s where we are.

“Everyone has to feel accountable for the results. Everyone has to feel super motivated. We have an amazing partner in Honda that we’ve managed to survive very difficult times together. We can’t stop and we won’t stop.”

The revised package, De la Rosa said, has already shown up in results. The AMR26 has got ahead of Cadillac and Williams in qualifying in the rounds that followed its introduction, with further gains arriving through a new Honda power unit at the Dutch Grand Prix.

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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