2026 Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team

[De Wet]

will AMR able to complete race distance in Australia? I really doubt it.

It is same as in 2015. It will take another 3 years by the time rule will change.... I don't know the logic of Honda in F1. they came 2015 screw Mclaren for 3 years then with RB. after that they gone now came back and doing same screw job with AMR.

If they have all the engine experience with RB why they are still struggling? It does seems, all the people who worked with Honda now with RB-Ford. It is a circle 0 again for Honda.

To be fair to Honda 2015 was not their fault. Ron Dennis forced them to join a year early. Ron was warned...

Current situation 100% Honda. I think next year they'll be good again.

[Ashwinv16]

will AMR able to complete race distance in Australia? I really doubt it.

It is same as in 2015. It will take another 3 years by the time rule will change.... I don't know the logic of Honda in F1. they came 2015 screw Mclaren for 3 years then with RB. after that they gone now came back and doing same screw job with AMR.

If they have all the engine experience with RB why they are still struggling? It does seems, all the people who worked with Honda now with RB-Ford. It is a circle 0 again for Honda.

Yes the team working is new but they have the blueprint if the old engine that redbull ford can't use. The Issue is to strive for zero turbo lag and high regen through the engine without the need for aggressive shifting andcto comonesate for the compression trick they made a concept change in January just days before Barcelona test. For which the gearbox and Aero mounts needed modifying.the Battery pack eas also modified. Unfortunately nothing ran on the test bench effectivitly so yeah. The battery issue is a major alarm bell though cause thats supposed to be the o thing not changed for March 1 homologation. But lets see. I won't be making any decision until after Albert park quali.

[basti313]

To be fair to Honda 2015 was not their fault. Ron Dennis forced them to join a year early. Ron was warned...

We had this nice discussion already over and over again last year. My opinion was always, they startet late also this time and are basically a year behind schedule:
viewtopic.php?p=1309929#p1309929

So what forced them this time? Why didn't they take it easy and go a year with Merc engines in the Aston? Might have even given them a big, big opportunity by developing out of budget limits for another year.

Current situation 100% Honda. I think next year they'll be good again.

I do not think so. Learning curves are steep. We do not see any engine being perfect now. So the others will also improve, they are hunting a moving target, which is a bit different to the past...where they were helped by new fuel coming up by the way, not developed out of their issues....

No, I believe only teams that are worse than 3% from the benchmark PU can introduce a new PU from races 7, 13, 19. Otherwise they stay homologated. So I think those races are the earliest to introduce an updated power unit.

These 3% are massive. With the possible Merc trick we are discussing that maybe 1% puts the rest into a not competitive situation.

[PowerandtheGlory]

The reality is, is Aston are anything like a second off the best.. they will be lapped twice over in Australia. Austral-asia is a big Honda market. It will not he very good. I expect them to retire both cars to avoid park ferme’ after 2/3 rqce distance….

[Rikrikrik]

Hope Alonso extends to have one last chance in 2027

He just will renew if he see progress and some gives him hope for 2027. He say it already

[Rikrikrik]

Believe whoever wants. I dont believe.

[Bisonas]

Did AMR had a filming day this season?? I remember one scheduled but canceled.

Did they actually had a filming day so far??

AFAIK They are allowed to do 2 per season.

Did they did any? I don't remember.

If not.. probably they were afraid of the possibility that a situation like this may arise and maybe saved the filming days for testing new engine upgrades and fixes as late as possible.

EDIT: Even one filming day with 200km could be enough for validating most of the data on a new upgraded engine that has all the fixes.

[TyreSlip]

The reality is, is Aston are anything like a second off the best.. they will be lapped twice over in Australia. Austral-asia is a big Honda market. It will not he very good. I expect them to retire both cars to avoid park ferme’ after 2/3 rqce distance….

I think you are being very optimistic to believe they will get to two-thirds race distance.

[Real PJ's Beard]

Did AMR had a filming day this season?? I remember one scheduled but canceled.

Did they actually had a filming day so far??

AFAIK They are allowed to do 2 per season.

Did they did any? I don't remember.

If not.. probably they were afraid of the possibility that a situation like this may arise and maybe saved the filming days for testing new engine upgrades and fixes as late as possible.

I want to say they had one after Bahrain T1 with Crawford but I could be wrong

[Kamel]

So it seems like it's more than 5% deficit) tragicomedy

[Jambier]

Did AMR had a filming day this season?? I remember one scheduled but canceled.

Did they actually had a filming day so far??

AFAIK They are allowed to do 2 per season.

Did they did any? I don't remember.

If not.. probably they were afraid of the possibility that a situation like this may arise and maybe saved the filming days for testing new engine upgrades and fixes as late as possible.

Indeed they are keeping them for later.

And regarding race in Australia, obviously they are not in a situation to finish it, so I expect them to start from the pits and then use the race as testing for as long as they can

[Jambier]

Believe whoever wants. I dont believe.

https://i.postimg.cc/90XRYBnS/Captura-d ... 094022.png

Honda knows and have already tell they weren't ready, to yes they might have a better version coming soon but what about March 1st deadline ?
Or maybe they can argue with FIA to homologate one for march 1st and have a reliability fix for first race ?

But even with a good Honda engine, I believe they will have gearbox or other issue, they are lacking massive numbers of laps to be ready

[diffuser]

will AMR able to complete race distance in Australia? I really doubt it.

It is same as in 2015. It will take another 3 years by the time rule will change.... I don't know the logic of Honda in F1. they came 2015 screw Mclaren for 3 years then with RB. after that they gone now came back and doing same screw job with AMR.

If they have all the engine experience with RB why they are still struggling? It does seems, all the people who worked with Honda now with RB-Ford. It is a circle 0 again for Honda.

Yeah, I don't understand this.
I don't think it will take that long cause there are no restrictions on what they can change. There was significant head winds in 2015. Their original design and regulation on how much could be changed from year to year had painted Honda into a corner. It wasn't till 2017 when they allowed them to change "whatever they wanted" that they started to catch up. That's basically what the regs are in 2026.

[peewon]

Believe whoever wants. I dont believe.

https://i.postimg.cc/90XRYBnS/Captura-d ... 094022.png

Yeah I dont buy it either. There has been nothing but positive quotes from Honda and Japan but yet to see any sort of evidence of anything positive. When Watanabe said they were struggling, people said it was lost in translation moment. So I went back and looked at Honda quotes from 2015. Nothing but positive. They even said they believe they can compete with Mercedes.

But that hardly seems to be the only problem. Gearbox cant handle the power the engine does produce. They dont even know where they stand in terms of performance and other teams will have a massive head start on setup and strategy optimization.

Its actually impressive to be this much of a shambles when there are teams making their debut.

[Otromundo]

Did AMR had a filming day this season?? I remember one scheduled but canceled.

Did they actually had a filming day so far??

AFAIK They are allowed to do 2 per season.

Did they did any? I don't remember.

If not.. probably they were afraid of the possibility that a situation like this may arise and maybe saved the filming days for testing new engine upgrades and fixes as late as possible.

Even one filming day with 200km could be enough for validating most of the data on a new upgraded engine that has all the fixes.

They did it last Saturday, the 14th. I thought it was a good idea to pull it out of thin air to do as many laps as possible with the car. They only released a short, "artistic" video.

Today it's over 40°C in Bahrain, if I'm not mistaken. They have serious temperature and cooling problems, and that's why I think they chose to only race in the afternoon when the temperature drops. They don't have enough spare parts, which indicates that the temperature and cooling problems are significant.

I think they rushed things too much and were aware of this before the season even started. The team presentation, for example, reminded me of Eurovision: all staged. I didn't like it, although I thought perhaps it was the current trend in F1. I'm sure they all knew they would have problems. What they didn't know was that there would be so many.

We'll see what happens this afternoon.