Fondmetal and Aston Martin: 26 years later, a Formula 1 car returns to our headquarters
An Aston Martin Formula 1 single-seater in the heart of Fondmetal. A special day to celebrate a return that has been 26 years in the making and to look back on a history that has linked Palosco to the top tier of motorsport for over four decades.
Thursday, September 17, was one of those days that’s hard to forget. At the Fondmetal headquarters in Palosco, we had the opportunity to host the single-seater of theAston Martin Aramco Formula One® Team’s, equipped with the wheels produced by Fondmetal for the 2026 season. Seeing it there, on our company premises, held a significance that went far beyond the mere presence of a Formula 1 car.
And to celebrate this new chapter, we wanted to bring together at our headquarters our clients, partners, friends, members of the press, and some of the people who are experiencing this new adventure firsthand.
The highlight of the event was, of course, the Aston Martin single-seater, which guests were able to view up close. But the day was above all an opportunity to explain what this comeback truly means for Fondmetal.
Matteo Bobbi and Paolo Ciccarone led a discussion with Luca Furbatto, Engineering Director of the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One® Team, along with Stefano Rumi and Alessandra Rumi and James Smith, a key figure in the Fondmetal forged wheel project. The result was a journey through the past and present.
The Work You Don’t See
During the interview, Luca Furbatto and James Smith also took the guests behind the scenes of the project, describing the work that led to the creation of the Fondmetal wheels for Aston Martin.
This process began long before the single-seater took to the track and was developed side by side with the team through simulations, analyses, prototypes, and continuous testing. More than twenty different geometrieswere evaluated before arriving at the final solution.
The manufacturing process also clearly illustrates just how every detail is taken to the extreme in Formula 1: a wheel is made from a forged magnesium blank weighing about 40 kilograms, which—through ultra-high-precision machining—is transformed into a finished component weighing about 6 kilograms.
These figures help illustrate just how much work, research, and expertise can go into a single component. And it is precisely in this ongoing pursuit of performance that Fondmetal’s expertise now meets that of Aston Martin.
A story that began more than forty years ago
The first chapter dates back to 1983, when Fondmetal produced its first monoblock magnesium wheel designed specifically for the Formula 1 championship. The desire to return never truly faded. During the meeting, Stefano Rumi explained how Fondmetal had been waiting for the right moment to take on a challenge of this caliber once again. The 2026 rule change has finally created that opportunity.
Fondmetal has invested in the necessary expertise by bringing specialists with extensive experience in the world of racing wheels into its team, and has chosen to focus the project on a single partner: Aston Martin.
What makes this choice even more meaningful is a connection that spans time and bears the name of Fernando Alonso. In 2000, when Gabriele Rumi was at the helm of Minardi, a very young Alonso was entering the world of Formula 1. Twenty-six years later, Fondmetal is reunited with Fernando Alonso behind the wheel of a race car equipped with its own wheels. A coincidence with deep emotional significance for the Rumi family and another thread connecting two distant eras of the same story.
The event provided an opportunity to look back on more than forty years of Fondmetal’s history. The first Formula 1 wheels. The Osella. The Williams. The founding of the Fondmetal racing team. The Minardi era. The years of aerodynamic development. And finally, 2026.
For Fondmetal, the return to Formula 1 is therefore not the beginning of something completely new. It is the continuation of a story—a story begun by Gabriele Rumi and carried on today by Stefano and Alessandra Rumi, together with the people who work at the company every day.
We would like to thank Luca Furbatto, Matteo Bobbi, and Paolo Ciccarone and everyone who helped make this day possible. But above all, we’d like to thank all the guests who chose to share this day with us, making this moment—one that will go down in our company’s history—even more special.
It was a day to remember where we came from, but even more so to look toward where we’re headed. Because 26 years later, Fondmetal has officially returned to the Formula 1 grid.
