2026 Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team

[Badger]

40KG!!! How credible is the source? How much development time and cost they need to dedicate only to reduce weight. Unless they nailed the aero, I doubt they’ll score that many points. Hoping it’s not true.

40KG is absolute nonsense, that’s not something you can just solve with upgrades in the season. Fake news as always

Maybe, but the 4 seconds must be coming from somewhere. 40 kg would be a little over a second per lap, and some of the top cars may be marginally overweight too at this stage. So let's say 40 kg over the limit is one second compared to the top, you still have 3 seconds to account for, maybe 2 seconds from the PU and gearbox, and then another second on aero and set-up.

[Leon Kennedy]

Calm down, guys, it's still testing. Ted Kravitz and Lobato also said that Newey has already identified the problems and has a plan to fix them. Regarding the engine, It's not just a gear change problem, but improvements have already been seen from day 1 to day 3.

If the issue is with engine and gearbox, how is Newey 'planning' to fix them ? He is just going to ask the powertrain guys to debug and fix this. I don't understand the obsession of media with "thanos-like designer who can do everything from tightening a bolt to writing an ECU algorithm"

I was referring to the chassis and cooling issues. Aston Martin makes the gearbox in-house, so I think they'll do something to help them. As for Honda, they haven't shown their cards yet.

[Otromundo]

40KG!!! How credible is the source? How much development time and cost they need to dedicate only to reduce weight. Unless they nailed the aero, I doubt they’ll score that many points. Hoping it’s not true.

40KG is absolute nonsense, that’s not something you can just solve with upgrades in the season. Fake news as always

Maybe, but the 4 seconds must be coming from somewhere. 40 kg would be a little over a second per lap, and some of the top cars may be marginally overweight too at this stage. So let's say 40 kg over the limit is one second compared to the top, you still have 3 seconds to account for, maybe 2 seconds from the PU and gearbox, and then another second on aero and set-up.

Hmm... your reasoning is unsettling. But it makes sense. It would be the worst option: extreme overweight.

But 40 kg seems insane to me. It can't be.

[jacme22]

40Kg is a different category. If the chassis is not great, it’s not going to matter much if they fix PU and gearbox problems. I’d imagine top teams are still 5-10kg above minimum, so it’s a 1 second disadvantage all other things being equal. I can’t believe they dropped the ball this hard.

edit: https://x.com/KemalSengulll/status/2022684700473765921 Motorsport Turkey journo seems to confirm overweight issues, although hasn't heard the 40kg figure.

[SSJ4]

So overweight and big issues with gear box.

[NAPI10]

Calm down, guys, it's still testing. Ted Kravitz and Lobato also said that Newey has already identified the problems and has a plan to fix them. Regarding the engine, It's not just a gear change problem, but improvements have already been seen from day 1 to day 3.

If the issue is with engine and gearbox, how is Newey 'planning' to fix them ? He is just going to ask the powertrain guys to debug and fix this. I don't understand the obsession of media with "thanos-like designer who can do everything from tightening a bolt to writing an ECU algorithm"

Newey is not just a 'Technical Designer' at AM; he is also an acting TP for the team. He is responsible for resource management to a certain degree. Whether he is good at it or not ; a different topic.
He must have discussed the issues with Honda & integration team to devise a plan to work on it.
There are lot of things that this team is doing it for first time. It’s going to take some time to bring it together.

[stewie325]

The most intriguing technical question for me is whether Newey - in his new team principle role - has stopped asking someone to print his daily emails, and reads them digitally instead. /s

[diffuser]

40KG!!! How credible is the source? How much development time and cost they need to dedicate only to reduce weight. Unless they nailed the aero, I doubt they’ll score that many points. Hoping it’s not true.

40KG is absolute nonsense, that’s not something you can just solve with upgrades in the season. Fake news as always

Maybe, but the 4 seconds must be coming from somewhere. 40 kg would be a little over a second per lap, and some of the top cars may be marginally overweight too at this stage. So let's say 40 kg over the limit is one second compared to the top, you still have 3 seconds to account for, maybe 2 seconds from the PU and gearbox, and then another second on aero and set-up.

They have A LOT of work to do.

[diffuser]

Calm down, guys, it's still testing. Ted Kravitz and Lobato also said that Newey has already identified the problems and has a plan to fix them. Regarding the engine, It's not just a gear change problem, but improvements have already been seen from day 1 to day 3.

If the issue is with engine and gearbox, how is Newey 'planning' to fix them ? He is just going to ask the powertrain guys to debug and fix this. I don't understand the obsession of media with "thanos-like designer who can do everything from tightening a bolt to writing an ECU algorithm"

Newey is not just a 'Technical Designer' at AM; he is also an acting TP for the team. He is responsible for resource management to a certain degree. Whether he is good at it or not ; a different topic.
He must have discussed the issues with Honda & integration team to devise a plan to work on it.
There are lot of things that this team is doing it for first time. It’s going to take some time to bring it together.

He seems to have handed off the lead speaker part back to Krack. Maybe official TP later?

[selvam_e2002]

Honda lost their reputation in F1. bad for them.

[TyreSlip]

I do not see how Aston Martin can shed 40 kg with upgrades in a single season. That is insane.

[damager21]

A lot of the noise around Aston Martin’s “disaster” looks wildly exaggerated to me. First it was rumors of the car being 40 kg overweight before it even turned a wheel. Then, after Barcelona, the narrative switched to them running a half‑baked car with overly simple front and rear wings. This week the spotlight suddenly swung to Honda, and by the end of Day 3 it had somehow become a Honda engine plus gearbox crisis. Now every one of those talking points is being rolled together and presented as proof that absolutely everything is wrong with the car.

Alonso has mentioned that AM wont be the fastest car in Australia, but I believe there could be serious progress during the course of this season.

[Ashwinv16]

Imagine if this turn out to be the biggest rage bait of the century

[FNTC]

Yeah would be funny if they are sandbagging, but I think that's less than 10% likely.

[krich]

im starting to get more and more confident its an historic sandbagging lol, 40 kg of overweight is more than amr25 and thats just plain impossible. And its not the first time Newey does it to keep the team focus on whats worth