2026 Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team

[zoroastar]

IMHO. If I was Stroll, Newey etc. I'd say to Honda ...The clock is running. I've started negotiating with Merc, Audi, Ferarri RBPT for 2027. If this isn't fixed by May...good bye. Get all the BIG guns that have moved on to other projects. Get them back into this project and get it done. I am not sitting around for Honda to get thier act together for 3 years.


Based on when Cowell went over to help Honda...this has already being going on for 6 months.

wait, you mean that this isnt all neweys fault to begin with? i couldve sworn thats the biggest theory being pushed in this highly technical thread

yeah, honda need to be taking a scorched earth strategy in dealing with this. its not doing them or the team any good letting this drag on through the whole season. basically all the success theyve had over the past few years is being overshadowed by this. i dont see stroll standing around and waiting for 3 or 4 years for them to become competitive this time around. you can like or dislike the guy but you cant say that he doesnt get things done.

[BassVirolla]

IMHO. If I was Stroll, Newey etc. I'd say to Honda ...The clock is running. I've started negotiating with Merc, Audi, Ferarri RBPT for 2027. If this isn't fixed by May...good bye. Get all the BIG guns that have moved on to other projects. Get them back into this project and get it done. I am not sitting around for Honda to get thier act together for 3 years.


Based on when Cowell went over to help Honda...this has already being going on for 6 months.

wait, you mean that this isnt all neweys fault to begin with? i couldve sworn thats the biggest theory being pushed in this highly technical thread

Some are doing some serious thinking stretching and mental gymnastics to make Honda the poor victims of the dreadful Adrian Newey.

I'm not saying that the chassis can not exacerbate / resonate some frequencies, but an excessive amount of vibrations can only come from three places: Bad tarmac, engine and gearbox.

For those comparing AMR26 to MP4-18, Pedro Martínez de la Rosa never stated that the MP4-18 was vibrating or shaking. He said it was flimsy and unreliable (structurally undersized), coupled with packaging solutions that made it difficult to repair.

I'd love to provide the quotes, but the interview was under paywall and is no longer available.

[diffuser]

IMHO. If I was Stroll, Newey etc. I'd say to Honda ...The clock is running. I've started negotiating with Merc, Audi, Ferarri RBPT for 2027. If this isn't fixed by May...good bye. Get all the BIG guns that have moved on to other projects. Get them back into this project and get it done. I am not sitting around for Honda to get thier act together for 3 years.


Based on when Cowell went over to help Honda...this has already being going on for 6 months.

wait, you mean that this isnt all neweys fault to begin with? i couldve sworn thats the biggest theory being pushed in this highly technical thread

Some are doing some serious thinking stretching and mental gymnastics to make Honda the poor victims of the dreadful Adrian Newey.

I'm not saying that the chassis can not exacerbate / resonate some frequencies, but an excessive amount of vibrations can only come from three places: Bad tarmac, engine and gearbox.

For those comparing AMR26 to MP4-18, Pedro Martínez de la Rosa never stated that the MP4-18 was vibrating or shaking. He said it was flimsy and unreliable (structurally undersized), coupled with packaging solutions that made it difficult to repair.

I'd love to provide the quotes, but the interview was under paywall and is no longer available.

Even more reason to switch Manufacturers. Then we know for certain who is to blame.

[Jaymz]

Getting real Mclaren vibes, both the Mclaren Honda, and the MP4-18!

Really feels like the team have went all in on Newey, which does make some sense, but things like not officially starting their car until he arrived was ultimately a decision led by that - there's no good reason not to have already been under way, other than a desire to give an Adrian a clean sheet of paper. They can't really complain about the lack of time because they chose to embrace that option, it wasn't forced on them.

Secondly we're getting all the greatest hits from Mclaren Honda; Honda on a compressed timeline versus other manufacturers, an aggressive car concept requiring compromises in the PU etc etc - wasn't Martin Whitmarsh around for both!

Then of course, the MP4-18, an aggressive Newey design that was, among other issues, plagued by fatal vibration problems. It's interesting that he's very publicly, immediately thrown Honda under the bus, even if true, just doesn't seem smart, and does have the vibes of Mclaren Honda, where they were certain it wasn't the car, until they got a Mercedes engine and it very much was the car. I have to think back to Newey complaining about Wache and co not always listening to him - perhaps Red Bull's engineering approach was able to adopt the good Newey ideas and deploy them in a more reliable way, or screen out the ones that just weren't going to work in the real world? Because here he seems to be back at the top of the pile with nobody to restrain him, like Mclaren, and we've got a very fragile car that shakes itself to bits...

I'm sorry to let you know but most of that is nonsense. I'm not really a fan of Newey for other reasons but he is the GOAT and by quite a margin. Also it wasn't Mclaren getting a Mercedes engine that highlighted some problems, it was getting the Renault engine. With the MP4-18 Mclaren relatively quickly reverted and done ok.

AM should be planning a contingency.

Lastly, how do you think Newey is going to develop this car if it doesn't have much track time. Same happened with Mclaren but it's widely accepted that McLaren had at least 2 decent chassis trying to run that heap of junk Honda. Newey and AM will be aiming for more than just decent.

[BassVirolla]

wait, you mean that this isnt all neweys fault to begin with? i couldve sworn thats the biggest theory being pushed in this highly technical thread

Some are doing some serious thinking stretching and mental gymnastics to make Honda the poor victims of the dreadful Adrian Newey.

I'm not saying that the chassis can not exacerbate / resonate some frequencies, but an excessive amount of vibrations can only come from three places: Bad tarmac, engine and gearbox.

For those comparing AMR26 to MP4-18, Pedro Martínez de la Rosa never stated that the MP4-18 was vibrating or shaking. He said it was flimsy and unreliable (structurally undersized), coupled with packaging solutions that made it difficult to repair.

I'd love to provide the quotes, but the interview was under paywall and is no longer available.

Even more reason to switch Manufacturers. Then we know for certain who is to blame.

I have little doubt that Lawrence will find a way if he feels the need

Nevertheless, I would like to see the Honda AMR partnering working fine. As much as I don't like the Honda way (do it differently for the sake of it), I reckon that Honda has a pedigree that few manufacturers can boast.

[F1doc]

I used to have a soft spot for this team from the Jordan/Force India days. It's lost that identity that made it endearing as an underdog with the changes from Stroll Snr; throwing money into the team won't buy championships.

As long as Lance remains in a seat, this isn't a team that can be taken seriously and there's a little schadenfreude reading up about their pre-season issues.

[SealTheRealDeal]

There's so much unknown right now that it's pre-mature to discuss dumping Honda. For all we know the race may yet be such a disaster that the FIA is forced to let manufacturers homologate new engines a lot sooner.

[f1isgood]

IMHO. If I was Stroll, Newey etc. I'd say to Honda ...The clock is running. I've started negotiating with Merc, Audi, Ferarri RBPT for 2027. If this isn't fixed by May...good bye. Get all the BIG guns that have moved on to other projects. Get them back into this project and get it done. I am not sitting around for Honda to get thier act together for 3 years.


Based on when Cowell went over to help Honda...this has already being going on for 6 months.

Lol. What if the car is bad again? And no one will seriously supply Aston Martin.

[diffuser]

Also the alleged clashes that Cowell and Newey had when it came to the design of the amr 26.
Tbh i think keeping fernando onboard for another year is just as important now, since their dream of attracting a top tier talent has diminished substantially

What did they clash on ?

[diffuser]

IMHO. If I was Stroll, Newey etc. I'd say to Honda ...The clock is running. I've started negotiating with Merc, Audi, Ferarri RBPT for 2027. If this isn't fixed by May...good bye. Get all the BIG guns that have moved on to other projects. Get them back into this project and get it done. I am not sitting around for Honda to get thier act together for 3 years.


Based on when Cowell went over to help Honda...this has already being going on for 6 months.

Lol. What if the car is bad again? And no one will seriously supply Aston Martin.

Why not ?

[604gtir]

The swings of emotion in this thread are quite comical. Fire newey, dump honda. Give them time. AMR wasn't going to win the championship this year. Took Mclaren almost 7 years after leaving honda, Took redbull 5ish years to start becoming competitive when they first started, and honda about 5yrs before starting to win with Redbull. Remember in 2023 when everyone wrote off Mclaren, it took half the season but they came back.

All signs point to another 2 odd years imo.
More time to dial in wind tunnel and simulators and correlation.
Lots of new people thrown together in the last 1.5 yrs, takes time for the workforce to mature and learn to work together in an efficient way.
I bet the repositioning of the mgu and battery was requested middle of last year, hence the vibrations and sudden cowell shift to help honda.

In any case, brace for pain for a little while it'll get better i promise.

[Leon Kennedy]

IMHO. If I was Stroll, Newey etc. I'd say to Honda ...The clock is running. I've started negotiating with Merc, Audi, Ferarri RBPT for 2027. If this isn't fixed by May...good bye. Get all the BIG guns that have moved on to other projects. Get them back into this project and get it done. I am not sitting around for Honda to get thier act together for 3 years.


Based on when Cowell went over to help Honda...this has already being going on for 6 months.

I read Cowell's statements in autumn on X, where he said the Honda engine was working very well. The situation is very peculiar.

[Leon Kennedy]

Aston Martin drivers position in AUSgp.
Fp1 P19 P20
Fp2 P14 P19
Fp3 P14 P16
Q P12 P15
R DNF DNF

All in favor of car 14.

2025 Round 1 results.
Q - P13 P19 (alonso, stroll)
R - P15 P17 (0 Championship points).

Aston Martin needs Rob Marshall. They need to sort out the chassis. The suspension has to be looked at by AMR. And perhaps it needs to look where there are aggressive design choices made, like the linkage to the monocoque for the front suspension wishbone swept far back toward the safety cell. Could vibrations from the front suspension to this area of the monocoque contribute? Could the length of the wishbone itself cause an oscillation? To understand the vibrations, the entire platform must be considered.

Yeah, so you think Adrian Newey got it all wrong and doesn't know these things I guess. By the way, no one mentions him, there is also a certain Bob Bell.

We have to consider the real problems, currently neither Honda nor Adrian have mentioned the front suspension, it's just our idea from the onboard videos.
They haven't touched any of the car's settings yet, focusing exclusively on vibrations and their origins. The chassis and aerodynamics can't yet be judged, I'm not saying it, they said it.


I understand that the mp4-18 comes to mind as in nightmares, but at the time there was no CFD, the gallery and all the rest advanced like now. Then it didn't even race, the 2003 one without updates played out for the world championship hands down but nobody remembers it.

But I'll try to clarify this car: The MP4-18 was years ahead of its time.
Extreme sidepods (precursors of modern cars),highly inclined radiators and ultra-tight packaging. So basically up to this point we are in line with amr26.

What was it about him that shocked others? The orward-facing driving position.
The driver was much further forward than in other cars.This served to: improve the center of mass and improve rear-end aerodynamics.
Furthermore, also the transmission was:
super short (ultra compact), very light and integrated into the aerodynamic packaging.
However, we don't know how the Aston Martin gearbox is structured and it doesn't seem to me that the driving position is that forward, quite the opposite.

But do you want to know the final straw?True the mp4-18 failed and so did the mp4-19 inspired by her. But the real evolution was the MP4-20, a car that had the same characteristics as the 18, but no one ever said anything about it. Because sometimes it's easier to see what went wrong than the other way around, the MP4-20 was another Newey perfection developed with ideas from 2003.

For example, no one mentions the KERS in Rb7. It didn't work at first, they said it would cause serious fire problems. How did it end? Total domination from the second half of the season.

This is just to let you know that it is too early to judge, Peter Windsor himself has said that he expects things to go well.

[shingles]

Any side that purely blames the other side is just silly. These are SYSTEMS, not isolated components. If AN/AMR really told Honda, it's all your fault, you need to fix it, then THEY are the problem. It's a SYSTEM, you MUST work together. If Honda said "no, engine smooth on dyno, YOUR problem", then Honda is the problem. There's a reason WORKS teams is supposed to have a benefit. You SHOULD have much better integration and conversations vs being a customer team. From the cheap seats, outside looking in, AMR hasn't really taken advantage of being a works team and still have a customer team mindset.

Perhaps they have and simply they just need more time.... which is not great, but ok it is what it is. But from "how to work with your partner"'s perspective... AN and AMR hasn't really been that great. You know, when Honda was in the sh!thole situation with McLaren, Eric Boullier did exactly as Newey is doing now... finger pointing. I mean, if you look at what happened at McLaren, (whoever's at fault) there's a lot of similar patterns here. Wanting a very tight package, being uncompromising, my way or the highway, "we've got a chassis that can win"... this is literally the same playbook! Years later in retrospect, it turns out, well sure Honda underperformed, but there sure were a lot of circumstances that McLaren created that did not help Honda.

The sad part is, there's also another playbook on how to do it right (see RBR).... I mean, Newey was there to see the Honda success at RBR, it boggles my mind that he doesn't know how to work with Honda. I hope that a lot of this IS theater... you play up how bad things are and dangerous it is, and then can say "well this is for safety, sure it adds HP, but it's just a by product of us fixing the problem". There's been a whispers out there that Newey is "uncompromising"... has "high standards"... those are fine... but in a TEAM sport that is looking to build SYSTEMS, you simply must learn to work together.

[madridista]

There is gazillions of people working at AM F1 if it went right, and only Newey when it goes wrong. hypocrites