2026 Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team

[mzso]

People only want to call out Honda has embarrassing because they had unrealistic expectations. Honda wasn't embarrassing working with Toro Rosso and working their way up. It's just like McLaren, their fans and Alonsos fans so quick to denigrate Honda because their hero isn't given a car he can compete with. Seems like the same crowd has moved to the AMR team.
Honda fans enjoy watching Honda overcome the challenges and rise to the top. We never expect them to be #1 always. It's all about the learning and growing process. Perhaps Honda needs a different team to improve as Aston themselves were 9th best team last year by Alonso's admission. Maybe they ought to partner with Williams instead.

I for one wasn't a fan of either. Actually I was quite optimistic about Honda. But it has become increasingly clear, the magnitude of their failings and dysfunction. Disorganized, neglectful, and left behind technologically.
And they only started to hastily reconfigure and put the effort required in the development program after they were exposed as having the clear distant worst engine/PU, despite two newcomers.

All criticism is well earned. It's not about overcoming challenges, it's about climbing out of a pit they dug themselves into. The challenges were the same for established manufacturers, and considerably more for RB and Audi, who had to put together a new programme, from ground up.

[diffuser]

That is something that makes things worse. Because, according to the FIA, the Red Bull engine is the most powerful one. No one other than the FIA ​​believes this.

The FIA don't have to believe. They have sensors that gather data from all cars that show it. So you see the Mercedes car is faster and think it has to be the ICE is more powerful. The FIA aren't looking at that, it's just looking at sensor data. Merc isn't faster cause the ICE is more powerfull, it's just that the Mercedes is a better all around car, while RBR just has a better ICE.

if you look at the qualifying data between Max and Ant https://www.gp-tempo.com/app?year=2026& ... =telemetry

It easy to make the argument that Max has more power, it's just doesn't carry as much speed in corners.

Time on straight, not top speed is what shows who has the most power across the lap. That is why the top 3 are Mercedes powered when you compute the time on straight delta across all GP qualifying's from R4 to R14. William's data is an outlier because they are overweight and F = ma.

https://i.postimg.cc/V6Z0TkV0/image.png

Rightly or wrongly, the FIA measure ICE power. Their claim is that RBPT has the most powerfull ICE.
That graph factors in stuff like traction and speed out of the last corner. A higher speed out of the last corner is like getting a head start. Plus nobody is obliged to deploy fully. You don't know what the deployment strategy is. If Merc electrical is better, which I claim but have no evidence, They can easily over come 5 or 10 ICE HP with 2 more seconds of 350kw electrical.

unfortunately for RBPT they will not be able to upgrade their MGU-K till 2028 season.

[AR3-GP]

Rightly or wrongly, the FIA measure ICE power. Their claim is that RBPT has the most powerfull ICE.
That graph factors in stuff like traction and speed out of the last corner. A higher speed out of the last corner is like getting a head start. Plus nobody is obliged to deploy fully. You don't know what the deployment strategy is. If Merc electrical is better, which I claim but have no evidence, They can easily over come 5 or 10 ICE HP with 2 more seconds of 350kw electrical.

The factors that you are pointing to are only noise/variance in the time on straight data. Would one opine that Alpine have a better anything than Red Bull or Ferrari, besides the PU itself?

Variance would only make things difficult if the 3 Mercedes powered teams didn't cluster at the top. What do you think is the reason for that? Divine intervention?

and Aston Martin features at the very bottom (weak PU and overweight) in spite of a supposed awesome chassis...it's not very hard is it?

[diffuser]

Rightly or wrongly, the FIA measure ICE power. Their claim is that RBPT has the most powerfull ICE.
That graph factors in stuff like traction and speed out of the last corner. A higher speed out of the last corner is like getting a head start. Plus nobody is obliged to deploy fully. You don't know what the deployment strategy is. If Merc electrical is better, which I claim but have no evidence, They can easily over come 5 or 10 ICE HP with 2 more seconds of 350kw electrical.

The factors that you are pointing to are only noise/variance in the time on straight data. Would one opine that Alpine have a better anything than Red Bull or Ferrari, besides the PU itself?

Variance would only make things difficult if the 3 Mercedes powered teams didn't cluster at the top. What do you think is the reason for that? Divine intervention?

and Aston Martin features at the very bottom (weak PU and overweight) in spite of a supposed awesome chassis...it's not very hard is it?

Right but the FIA have sensors that measure torque on the ICE and the MGU-K. That data has 0 noise. Just the facts.

[AR3-GP]

Rightly or wrongly, the FIA measure ICE power. Their claim is that RBPT has the most powerfull ICE.
That graph factors in stuff like traction and speed out of the last corner. A higher speed out of the last corner is like getting a head start. Plus nobody is obliged to deploy fully. You don't know what the deployment strategy is. If Merc electrical is better, which I claim but have no evidence, They can easily over come 5 or 10 ICE HP with 2 more seconds of 350kw electrical.

The factors that you are pointing to are only noise/variance in the time on straight data. Would one opine that Alpine have a better anything than Red Bull or Ferrari, besides the PU itself?

Variance would only make things difficult if the 3 Mercedes powered teams didn't cluster at the top. What do you think is the reason for that? Divine intervention?

and Aston Martin features at the very bottom (weak PU and overweight) in spite of a supposed awesome chassis...it's not very hard is it?

Right but the FIA have sensors that measure torque on the ICE and the MGU-K. That data has 0 noise. Just the facts.

Are you intending to reply to someone else? Because my post isn't about the ICE. It's about the overall PU. Furthermore, without knowing the specific methodology used to rank the PUs (peaks, distributions, averages, broadness of peaks), then you also don't really have anything to ground what you've been told by the FIA about the ICE. Neither of us know what the context of "best ICE" is, but we can both see that overall PU performance is something different and hinted at by the clustering of Mercedes powered cars in the time on straight analysis, as opposed to your shallow top speed analysis.

[diffuser]

The factors that you are pointing to are only noise/variance in the time on straight data. Would one opine that Alpine have a better anything than Red Bull or Ferrari, besides the PU itself?

Variance would only make things difficult if the 3 Mercedes powered teams didn't cluster at the top. What do you think is the reason for that? Divine intervention?

and Aston Martin features at the very bottom (weak PU and overweight) in spite of a supposed awesome chassis...it's not very hard is it?

Right but the FIA have sensors that measure torque on the ICE and the MGU-K. That data has 0 noise. Just the facts.

Are you intending to reply to someone else? Because my post isn't about the ICE. It's about the overall PU. Furthermore, without knowing the specific methodology used to rank the PUs (peaks, distributions, averages, broadness of peaks), then you also don't really have anything to ground what you've been told by the FIA about the ICE. Neither of us know what the context of "best ICE" is, but we can both see that overall PU performance is something different and hinted at by the clustering of Mercedes powered cars in the time on straight analysis, as opposed to your shallow top speed analysis.

I did misunderstand you a bit but still...

Overall power is still ICE + MGU-K. The ICE will always produce a fixed maximum amount of power for a given manufacturer at full throttle. That isn't the case for the MGU-K.

There is no guarantee that, on the particular straight being measured, one or more cars weren't using a deployment strategy that intentionally resulted in them deploying less electrical energy. Less electrical energy can mean less deployment time, lower kW, or both.

EDIT

I agree with your premise. Just think that the tool you're using to prove it is flawed.

[AR3-GP]

I did misunderstand you a bit but still...

Overall power is still ICE + MGU-K. The ICE will always produce a fixed maximum amount of power for a given manufacturer at full throttle. That isn't the case for the MGU-K.

I cannot do a thesis about ICE on here. but this part isn't true either. The power output of the ICE in a single lap depends on intake air temperature, PU temperature, fuel temperature, air density, humidity and many many other factors. Even a headwind and a tail wind is going to subtly shift performance at the margins. Each manufacturer's PU is even sensitive in different ways to all of these parameters. The manufacturers hope for consistent performance, but the ICE is self-tuning and will deviate as required for reliability.

There is no guarantee that, on the particular straight being measured, one or more cars weren't using a deployment strategy that intentionally resulted in them deploying less electrical energy. Less electrical energy can mean less deployment time, lower kW, or both.

That's why you sample over multiple race weekends and you include every straight on the track and not just 1 of them . We may not know whether one team is deploying more than another on any single straight (to your point), but we do know that by the end of the lap, all teams deploy roughly around the maximum permitted by the regulations. Deployment means you convert battery energy into straight line speed and it works the same way on any straight. Worrying about individual straights is just a confusing way to look at the big picture which is the total amount of energy used across all of the straights, and that's the same for every manufacturer. That's why a time on every straight analysis works. We do not care about specific straights. We just know that across all the straights, everyone used 8MJ or whatever the number is for a given track.

[diffuser]

I did misunderstand you a bit but still...

Overall power is still ICE + MGU-K. The ICE will always produce a fixed maximum amount of power for a given manufacturer at full throttle. That isn't the case for the MGU-K.

I cannot do a thesis about ICE on here. but this part isn't true either. The power output of the ICE in a single lap depends on intake air temperature, PU temperature, fuel temperature, air density, humidity and many many other factors. Even a headwind and a tail wind is going to subtly shift performance at the margins. Each manufacturer's PU is even sensitive in different ways to all of these parameters. The manufacturers hope for consistent performance, but the ICE is self-tuning and will deviate as required for reliability.

There is no guarantee that, on the particular straight being measured, one or more cars weren't using a deployment strategy that intentionally resulted in them deploying less electrical energy. Less electrical energy can mean less deployment time, lower kW, or both.

That's why you sample over multiple race weekends and you include every straight on the track and not just 1 of them . We may not know whether one team is deploying more than another on any single straight (to your point), but we do know that by the end of the lap, all teams deploy roughly around the maximum permitted by the regulations. Deployment means you convert battery energy into straight line speed. It doesn't matter where you did it but at some point, each team did this conversion for the full amount they are allowed on a given track. It would maybe only be the case of Honda where you cannot guarantee that they deploy the full track specific energy allotment across the lap because I know they have many issues right now.

Sampling over multiple races is good, it's obvious you've thought about it and improves it. I don't know of a better way of doing it. I just know that way is flawed.

[zoroastar]

its annoying that the FIA obviously know that their measuring process is flawed, but they are cool with just letting it continue. even if it means that the whole scenario they were trying to avoid (the dominance of one team for a whole rule cycle) comes to fruition. theyd rather make it a lame series than admit that they made a mistake. theyve shown that half a dozen times in the last 6 months. there has to be a better way to measure the competitiveness of a power unit. the big advertisement of this new ruleset was 50/50 power, BUT only half of that counts. it doesnt make any sense.

[diffuser]

its annoying that the FIA obviously know that their measuring process is flawed, but they are cool with just letting it continue. even if it means that the whole scenario they were trying to avoid (the dominance of one team for a whole rule cycle) comes to fruition. theyd rather make it a lame series than admit that they made a mistake. theyve shown that half a dozen times in the last 6 months. there has to be a better way to measure the competitiveness of a power unit. the big advertisement of this new ruleset was 50/50 power, BUT only half of that counts. it doesnt make any sense.

It's cause it measures power, not recharge or efficiency. The electrical power when deployed at max is the same for all manufactures. It seems that Merc is more efficient at deploying energy or can recharge more. This leads to them being able to deploy the electricity for longer amount of time.

• It's not like Merc is using the ADOU this year. So it will only make a difference next year.

• If you look at The teams that have used their ADOU upgrades this year for performance gains, you can barely tell the difference.

• All the other teams that got ADUO have like double up to 4 times extra resource than Merc is getting.so I don'texpect to be a huge improvement

• We also don't know if the electrical edge that Merc has is coming from software. Everyone can work on software

I mean RBPT might have something to complain about but nobody on the ADOU list does.

[AR3-GP]

• It's not like Merc is using the ADOU this year. So it will only make a difference next year.

https://autoracer.it/aduo-mercedes-powe ... rari-audi/

The ADUO token will be spent on a new turbocharger
According to what AutoRacer has learned, the intervention carried out by Mercedes in this 2026 season thanks to the ADUO concession will concern the turbocharger.

[diffuser]

• It's not like Merc is using the ADOU this year. So it will only make a difference next year.

https://autoracer.it/aduo-mercedes-powe ... rari-audi/

The ADUO token will be spent on a new turbocharger
According to what AutoRacer has learned, the intervention carried out by Mercedes in this 2026 season thanks to the ADUO concession will concern the turbocharger.

I guess things changed. Initially they weren't gonna upgrade but just updating the turbo sound like a small thing, when you could upgrade everything.

BTW good stuff there AR3-GP.

[zoroastar]

its annoying that the FIA obviously know that their measuring process is flawed, but they are cool with just letting it continue. even if it means that the whole scenario they were trying to avoid (the dominance of one team for a whole rule cycle) comes to fruition. theyd rather make it a lame series than admit that they made a mistake. theyve shown that half a dozen times in the last 6 months. there has to be a better way to measure the competitiveness of a power unit. the big advertisement of this new ruleset was 50/50 power, BUT only half of that counts. it doesnt make any sense.

It's cause it measures power, not recharge or efficiency. The electrical power when deployed at max is the same for all manufactures. It seems that Merc is more efficient at deploying energy or can recharge more. This leads to them being able to deploy the electricity for longer amount of time.

• It's not like Merc is using the ADOU this year. So it will only make a difference next year.

• If you look at The teams that have used their ADOU upgrades this year for performance gains, you can barely tell the difference.

• All the other teams that got ADUO have like double up to 4 times extra resource than Merc is getting.so I don'texpect to be a huge improvement

• We also don't know if the electrical edge that Merc has is coming from software. Everyone can work on software

I mean RBPT might have something to complain about but nobody on the ADOU list does.

yeah theyve made the ability to upgrade, or measure the true effectiveness of the power units so complicated that its redundant. if mercedes needed to redesign the PU they would. but they dont need to. theyre so far ahead of anyone else, yet somehow were granted upgrades lol. its not mercedes fault they are so much better than anyone else. but honestly, did anybody think it would be any different? my point is, these power units suck. there is enough technology in f1 without needing to get so complicated with the engines that a company like honda cant even wrap their brains around it. if you started on the back foot, youre probably doomed for several years. its just stupid.

[OnEcRiTiCaL]

its annoying that the FIA obviously know that their measuring process is flawed, but they are cool with just letting it continue. even if it means that the whole scenario they were trying to avoid (the dominance of one team for a whole rule cycle) comes to fruition. theyd rather make it a lame series than admit that they made a mistake. theyve shown that half a dozen times in the last 6 months. there has to be a better way to measure the competitiveness of a power unit. the big advertisement of this new ruleset was 50/50 power, BUT only half of that counts. it doesnt make any sense.

It's cause it measures power, not recharge or efficiency. The electrical power when deployed at max is the same for all manufactures. It seems that Merc is more efficient at deploying energy or can recharge more. This leads to them being able to deploy the electricity for longer amount of time.

• It's not like Merc is using the ADOU this year. So it will only make a difference next year.

• If you look at The teams that have used their ADOU upgrades this year for performance gains, you can barely tell the difference.

• All the other teams that got ADUO have like double up to 4 times extra resource than Merc is getting.so I don'texpect to be a huge improvement

• We also don't know if the electrical edge that Merc has is coming from software. Everyone can work on software

I mean RBPT might have something to complain about but nobody on the ADOU list does.

yeah theyve made the ability to upgrade, or measure the true effectiveness of the power units so complicated that its redundant. if mercedes needed to redesign the PU they would. but they dont need to. theyre so far ahead of anyone else, yet somehow were granted upgrades lol. its not mercedes fault they are so much better than anyone else. but honestly, did anybody think it would be any different? my point is, these power units suck. there is enough technology in f1 without needing to get so complicated with the engines that a company like honda cant even wrap their brains around it. if you started on the back foot, youre probably doomed for several years. its just stupid.

Is not suck at all! Is just the first year with missed races! We said the same at ground effect cars when dolphin effect was in every comments. Slowly disappeared and they get faster and faster than ever. Here will be the same ,better turbo better engine, deploy regen ,recharge speed and everything. I think after 1,5 year they will be 2-3 second faster. What i wpuld change is just a little bigger battery like instead of 4 a 5-6 MJ.

[etusch]

Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur has underscored the vast complexity of closing the Scuderia’s top-speed gap to front-runner Mercedes, cautioning that power unit development requires a far longer timeline than chassis upgrades.

https://www.motorsportweek.com/2026/09/ ... d-deficit/