Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll must endure an immensely difficult weekend for Aston Martin in Australia. The AMR26 is severely limited, predominantly by a Honda engine that loses several seconds per lap to the other manufacturers.
Whilst some of the more extreme vibrations experienced in testing have been minimised, this does not address Honda’s core issues. In fact, Aston Martin are still forced to exclusively run on high fuel loads to keep their vibrations under control.
Running lower fuel, and therefore having a lighter car, would significantly worsen this vulnerability. Moreover, the Japanese battery’s poor electrical recovery means the AMR26 runs out of energy hundreds of metres before the braking zone.
With all these problems to contend with, the story surrounding Aston Martin is not particularly positive. Amidst this backdrop, Fernando Alonso insists the team remains motivated.
Aston Martin and Honda out of sync
On paper, the 2026 season was supposed to be an opportunity for Fernando Alonso to challenge towards the front. After all, the last time a car designed by Adrian Newey failed to at least finish on the podium was 40 years ago.
With the latest facilities and exclusive partnership with a Championship-winning manufacturer in Honda, there was plenty of optimism surrounding this project at the beginning of the winter break.
Unfortunately, this positivity is long in the past. In many ways, a comedy of errors have put Aston Martin in this position.
According to Adrian Newey’s latest media declarations, only 30% of the engineers who helped construct Honda’s title-winning engines are still working in the factory. The remaining personnel have either gone to other branches of the company or been signed by other teams.
Perhaps more concerningly, Aston Martin only realised this in November of last year. For context, the team and Honda agreed on their partnership for these regulations in April 2023.
The question, therefore, is how both parties could have gone so long with such a fundamental misunderstanding.
It is difficult to comprehend how Aston went two and a half years without closely monitoring their own engine suppliers. Given that Adrian Newey began working at the team in April 2025, this saga was outside his control.
Regardless, the team’s focus cannot on past, but instead working to improve the situation going forward. On this front, the prevailing view is that a comeback would require a near-miraculous recovery.
Alonso says Aston Martin welcome the challenge
According to Alonso, however, the atmosphere within the team is more hopeful than is being portrayed:
“We are much less negative than media and people around. It’s nice to tell the story when someone is doing great, and when someone is doing wrongly – or not things are not going well.
“You try to exaggerate both ends. We know where we are, as I said yesterday, we have a big challenge in front of us.”
Few would envy to be in either Alonso or Stroll’s place. Having to meet the media on a regular basis whilst being in such a crisis cannot be easy.
After all, aside from pointing out the obvious, there is only so much Aston Martin’s drivers can contribute to this discussion. They themselves have been caught off guard by the extent of the AMR26’s predicament.
Still, Alonso is experienced enough to navigate his way through the media’s scrutiny:
“But everyone in the team is embracing the challenge in a way, and trying everything we can to go out of the situation. This is Formula 1.
“Unfortunately, technology is very complex and things require a little bit of time. We are running every day in free practices and every week, Grand Prix to Grand Prix – and maybe we don’t see the progress we all want to see.
“But there are things happening, smaller or bigger, there is always progress in the team. So let’s hope that is visible in the lap-time as soon as possible.”
There is still a scenario where, assuming Honda can get their engine to a respectable level, Aston Martin can progress up the field.
Simply by running their engine at full power and fixing their battery’s recovery, the AMR26 can unlock huge performance. From there, Newey and his technical team can get to work.
However, until Honda’s power unit weaknesses are addressed, this cannot happen. The AMR26 is not even carrying enough momentum into high-speed corners to gather meaningful aero data.
In this sense, the Silverstone-based operation are waiting for the first domino to fall before making their next steps. The question is how long it will take for Honda’s engine to get into a respectable window and put Aston’s technical team back in play.