2026 Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team

[NAPI10]

Remember Alonso saying last season, he's more likely to continue in F1 if Aston have a "bad 2026", I'd like just one year fighting for a third WDC, hope he gets a 1 year extension and doesn't go out like this.

Both Lawrence & Alonso don't have any other option.
No top driver going to sign, unless team start showing some competitiveness.

[Jambier]

Remember Alonso saying last season, he's more likely to continue in F1 if Aston have a "bad 2026", I'd like just one year fighting for a third WDC, hope he gets a 1 year extension and doesn't go out like this.

Both Lawrence & Alonso don't have any other option.
No top driver going to sign, unless team start showing some competitiveness.

Yep, Alonso can do 2027 but he can also just stop...
That would be a shame because everything points toward a much better 2027 than 2026.
2027 last season that's for sure, last hope, last chance for a win and retire on a good season

[HPD]

It's not as bad as 2015 pre season.

A cup half full guy!

I'm optimistic they'll pull this all together this year. This just reeks of a rushed attempt to get the best ideas out there from all parties involved but not having tested/optimized them in the shop/test bed.

I.am usually very pessimistic about everything, but I remember 2015 testing quite well as a Alonso fan, and as bad as this looks its nowhere near as bad as back then when it was just hopeless.
Season will start bad but it will improve at much quicker rate than in 2015.....just because Honda is more mature and AM factory is much better that that of McLaren in 2015

Thanks for your reasonable comment, and Abarth, Jambier comment too. After reading 20 pages of pure nonsense, like Red Bull winning the championship without Honda, comments from lifeless McLaren fans, or people saying the season is going to be long because of Honda fans, trying to create a Newey vs. Honda or an Alonso vs. Honda rivalry.
These same people are creating the toxicity here. Relax people

[ispano6]

I don't think people within the team are blaming anything other than time. It is always easy to say in hindsight what the team could have done to be better prepared and that onus usually falls on leadership. In this case it could be Stroll Sr. or Andy Green not being on top of what they could have been prior to Newey's arrival. Should Green have been more closely scrutinizing the power unit regulation verbiage and checking to see if Honda was reading in-between the lines? Could a gearbox been developed the prior season to mate with the Mercedes unit such that they could already be familiar again with "teething" troubles of their own design? Could it be that the requested packaging of the drivetrain is a debilitating factor that requires clever solutions that aren't legal or are in the gray area or simply cannot be fabricated at the track? Yes, Yes, Yes, but all in hindsight.

The current voice of the team that I pay the most attention to is Mike Krack. He to me, right now, is like the Franz Tost that AMR needs. Without Tost, there would have been no RedBull Honda championships. I hope Krack can be the bridge that Tost was.

[Miha_v]

I still remember the pain of watching Mclaren-Honda years (and Alonso in his prime driving way behind). I sincerely hope problem is not a single bad element by itself, but the whole package not working in harmony. If the latter is the case and they manage to fight somewhere in the midfield, chaos of first races could provide potential for some good results and optimism (until improved engine / gearbox are delivered).

[Leon Kennedy]

With the rules, once the PU is homologated on 1st March 2026, there's nothing stopping Honda from designing an upgrade for race 7, right?

Fix realibity and integration chassis problems first.what will a slightly more powerful engine do if a gearbox can't handle a detuned engine. These team can't even finish half a race.they should have joined partnerships with mclaren or redbull on gearbox side.

Sure, and you take a Redbull or McLaren gearbox made for their chassis and especially for their engine, how do you make it work with the Honda engine . It doesn't make sense, rather they should have asked Honda to make the gearbox, but as someone said it was difficult to integrate it with the suspension and chassis, in short they had to do an integration job in close contact, which is evidently missing. I expected more from Cowell on this. Now it is said that he is in Japan, because it is true that the ADUO is valid from Game 6, but you can start development now and have it completed by Game 6. Is there some clause that forces you to start development after Game 6? If so, we're in trouble.But I don't think so, I quote "diffuser" who usually knows everything about the regulations .

[Leon Kennedy]

I don't think people within the team are blaming anything other than time. It is always easy to say in hindsight what the team could have done to be better prepared and that onus usually falls on leadership. In this case it could be Stroll Sr. or Andy Green not being on top of what they could have been prior to Newey's arrival. Should Green have been more closely scrutinizing the power unit regulation verbiage and checking to see if Honda was reading in-between the lines? Could a gearbox been developed the prior season to mate with the Mercedes unit such that they could already be familiar again with "teething" troubles of their own design? Could it be that the requested packaging of the drivetrain is a debilitating factor that requires clever solutions that aren't legal or are in the gray area or simply cannot be fabricated at the track? Yes, Yes, Yes, but all in hindsight.

The current voice of the team that I pay the most attention to is Mike Krack. He to me, right now, is like the Franz Tost that AMR needs. Without Tost, there would have been no RedBull Honda championships. I hope Krack can be the bridge that Tost was.

Dude, I don't know where you got this information but Andrew Green is no longer working in F1 with Aston Martin. And Regarding Tost, it was not him who was responsible, but Redbull itself who lent the Honda engine to Toro Rosso to test it and the following year they also adopted it (in 2019). He was simply the team principal and as a customer team he followed the directives of Red Bull, Horner above all.

[Bill]

With the rules, once the PU is homologated on 1st March 2026, there's nothing stopping Honda from designing an upgrade for race 7, right?

Fix realibity and integration chassis problems first.what will a slightly more powerful engine do if a gearbox can't handle a detuned engine. These team can't even finish half a race.they should have joined partnerships with mclaren or redbull on gearbox side.

Sure, and you take a Redbull or McLaren gearbox made for their chassis and especially for their engine, how do you make it work with the Honda engine . It doesn't make sense, rather they should have asked Honda to make the gearbox, but as someone said it was difficult to integrate it with the suspension and chassis, in short they had to do an integration job in close contact, which is evidently missing. I expected more from Cowell on this. Now it is said that he is in Japan, because it is true that the ADUO is valid from Game 6, but you can start development now and have it completed by Game 6. Is there some clause that forces you to start development after Game 6? If so, we're in trouble.But I don't think so, I quote "diffuser" who usually knows everything about the regulations .

A form of partnership were you draw expertise rather building a team from scratch .i didnt say they should take their gearbox. Outside the gearbox casing the internal parts can be shared in facts fia ones proposed a standard gearbox for all teams.

[Andi76]

Everyone has their own opinion, of course. I don't like it when you bring up age, especially since you have several solid arguments and I'd like to base my argument solely on that. A dialogue, we don't have to necessarily convince ourselves of other people's ideas. Closing this premise, regarding the team not being ready yet, I don't think so at all. It's obvious that if Newey goes to Cadillac, this won't become a world championship car, It seems to me that Briatore himself also declared that he wanted Newey, and that the latter didn't find them "attractive." This means that Aston Martin has a lot of untapped potential: just think about 2023 when they showed up with those sloping sides set a precedent for McLaren, in 2024 with floating sidepods and also in 2025 they had tiny radiators. Among other things, in 2024 the team that made the most updates overall. This team isn't like the 2007 Red Bulls, it's a team with a lot of talent that lacked leadership and now they have it (they themselves declared it a few days ago). 2007 Red Bulls didn't have the best facilities in the paddock. Planning for a win three years ahead is something for those who have excuses. In 2021, Alpine had declared that they were aiming to win in 2025, in the meantime almost the entire corporate structure has changed and look where they are. You don't know what will happen in 3 years, if the staff changes, if the engine changes, etc. You always have to focus on the current season to make Getting better and better. Even Cowell, when Newey introduced himself to the team and said they hoped to win within two years, said he did it to motivate the team to push and win right away and that it wasn't true that he wanted to wait 2 years. But that's how it's done, then it can go wrong, that's another story. But I assure you that the car they brought is not a car for those who are already thinking about a 3-year cycle and are thinking about winning the following years like Redbull 2007, it's a car that's scary to look at, it's super extreme, it's not conservative in any way, it's a car that already wants to win. As for the MP-18, it's the only car so far that Newey has really made a mistake and that hasn't even taken to the track, but in 2003 they were fighting for the world championship anyway. Then it was a different F1,Ferrari was the team that spent the most, just as in the turbo hybrid era Redbull was the third team that spent the most and among other things Newey had also lost interest in the regulations because he was building a sailing boat. Things have really changed after the Budget Cup, teams like McLaren 2023 have made a sensational comeback that has probably never happened in the entire history of F1, following the your reasoning this could never have happened, among other things a customer team. Well, Williams 98 and McLaren 2006 weren't his projects anymore, Williams 98 isn't even named after him, a bit like rb20. Regarding Newey alone, he brought several of his own solutions, such as the rb16b rear suspension and the 2009 McLaren pylons. Not saying that it is Newey's work is simply nonsense. Even the aerodynamic and non-mechanical suspensions are his work, there is a lot of his hand in this car, denying it would not be true also because in the interview he himself declares who challenged the mechanics and they accepted the challenge. They themselves declared that they waited until the end for his arrival to validate his ideas. This is not overestimating anyone, They say it themselves, Alonso himself, I mean, guys, this isn't barroom propaganda. He's the greatest engineer in history, capable of even making Leyton House win. 100% of all its teams have reached the podium so far, that's not an opinion, it's a fact. A small digression: McLaren MP18 (there were no tunnels or simulators like there are today) had broken the single lap record, It was a monster of a concept that was too far ahead of its time, but it innovated and set a precedent. I conclude by saying that it's obvious that Newey alone isn't enough, everything needs to be integrated, but in my opinion Aston Martin is a team that has finished its preparations and is ready to win.

I'm sorry that you're bothered by the age issue (what actually says something...), but unfortunately the shortcomings are obvious. Your argument reveals throughout that you lack basic experience and knowledge of how an F1 team works and how engineers in certain positions work. What you're doing is a mixture of pure hero worship and wishful thinking.

There's no question that Aston Martin has a lot of potential. One of the most valuable minds there is Marco Fainello; he is rarely mentioned, but he is probably the most important person on the team after Adrian Newey. However, there is a huge difference between existing potential and the ability to utilize it. Your own argument refutes you here: you talk about the period from 2023 to 2025, during which the team continuously got worse. The number of updates the team brought also made the car worse rather than better. This clearly shows that this is anything but a team where all the cogs are already meshing.

This brings us to your mistake regarding McLaren: McLaren did not become a top team overnight. It was the result of years of work and the correlation of wind tunnel, CFD, and simulation. Aston Martin is just at the beginning of this process (as Newey himself admits).

On the subject of leadership: Here, too, your lack of knowledge is abundantly clear. It doesn't work by simply installing one or two managers and then suddenly the team has 'leadership'. Leadership means structures, organization, processes, and routines. In F1, this is heavily about concepts, methodologies, and technologies. A leader alone cannot achieve anything overnight; it takes time for these mechanisms to take effect. Leadership must first harness the existing potential through necessary changes – and that takes time. Recent years have shown that Aston Martin is currently unable to do this: hundreds of updates without progress and increasingly poor results speak for themselves.
Calibrating a wind tunnel takes years, and even Newey can't do it immediately. Therefore, your comment "Planning for a win three years ahead is for those who have excuses" only demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge about how F1, its tools, and a team of over 1,000 people work. This is not a bicycle where you can change direction immediately, but a sluggish aircraft carrier that needs time to turn. Anyone who has even the slightest clue will confirm this.

We could discuss this further: for example, whether Ferrari really spent the most at the time – in fact, McLaren was not far behind if you add the 200 million from Mercedes to the budget (which you have to do, as Ferrari's engines were included in the budget). Or about other mistakes you made: no Williams was ever named after Newey; they were all named 'FW' after Frank Williams and not 'AN'. Furthermore, Newey was very much involved in the 1998 FW20. An F1 car is almost finished in November when Newey left; the design and development are long since complete. The same applies to the 2006 McLaren. Likewise, Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne were in fact the fathers of the F2007, as both, as senior technical engineers, had already defined and completed the development of the car down to the last screw before they left.

Of course, someone like Newey brings concepts and ideas to the table. But do you really think he works out the details of aerodynamic surfaces or mechanical suspensions himself? He does lend a hand, but that's what designers and aerodynamicists are for. A technical director or chief designer sets the direction, has the big picture in mind, and leads the specialist groups. He doesn't build or design individual components in detail – it's been that way for almost 30 years. There's a very nice interview with Rory Byrne, whose working methods were similar to Newey's.

In fact, statistically speaking, Newey is not the most successful engineer in history; he's just the one with the most hype. Aldo Costa won the same number of titles in less time. Ross Brawn is ahead of him in terms of win rate. Also, the MP4-18 never broke a lap record. The gearbox wasn't structurally rigid enough, deformed, and caused the rear end to be unpredictable. You can't set a record with a car like that. That's a myth that proves your fanboyism is clouding your view of reality.

Coming back to Aston Martin: Newey himself openly admits the problems with correlation, wind tunnel, and simulator. That refutes your claim that the team is 'ready to win'. Wind tunnels can't be calibrated just like that, and organizations can't be changed by a single person within a few days. It takes years – just like the development of complex technologies, for example in the field of transmissions.

I think we should leave it at that, because I actually know what I'm talking about.
For me, F1 is not something distant from television, and the engineers are not strangers...

[jacme22]

A lot of eyes targeting Honda but to what extent is Aston Martin’s mess a result of internal instability? Between the constant leadership turnover of the last 24 months and the obvious failure to manage key supplier relationships, the team seems to be completely lost. The comparison with McLaren’s 2023 season is flawed. McLaren were very self aware they were going to have to write off their car before it even hit the track, but Aston Martin looks genuinely blindsided by their massive issues, they tell the press that this is way worse than they have thought.

This disconnect between expectations and reality, imo, only points to significant flaws in their testing and validations processes. Until they can fix that, I have low hopes they can deliver sufficient improvement thanks to ADUO and other changes.

People often underestimate the difficulty of overhauling a team's culture and processes. If leadership positions are still held by those with a legacy mindset, they risk 'infecting' or neutralizing the impact of shiny new signings.

[Alo_Fan]

With the rules, once the PU is homologated on 1st March 2026, there's nothing stopping Honda from designing an upgrade for race 7, right?

Yes, and I believe they are already working on it, then it needs to be proven by ADUO that the engine itself is less powerfull.

Then for the gearbox and the rest, they need to work on it asap, but obviously they are doing it, and those 4 months late cannot be wiped by magic so... wait is all we can do.

From the rumours, its apparently 5% slower, which meets the 3% threshold, should hopefully be a big improvement in reliability and power

[Alo_Fan]

With the rules, once the PU is homologated on 1st March 2026, there's nothing stopping Honda from designing an upgrade for race 7, right?

Fix realibity and integration chassis problems first.what will a slightly more powerful engine do if a gearbox can't handle a detuned engine. These team can't even finish half a race.they should have joined partnerships with mclaren or redbull on gearbox side.

Sure, and you take a Redbull or McLaren gearbox made for their chassis and especially for their engine, how do you make it work with the Honda engine . It doesn't make sense, rather they should have asked Honda to make the gearbox, but as someone said it was difficult to integrate it with the suspension and chassis, in short they had to do an integration job in close contact, which is evidently missing. I expected more from Cowell on this. Now it is said that he is in Japan, because it is true that the ADUO is valid from Game 6, but you can start development now and have it completed by Game 6. Is there some clause that forces you to start development after Game 6? If so, we're in trouble.But I don't think so, I quote "diffuser" who usually knows everything about the regulations .

From the Spanish side, they were saying Honda are planning on bringing the new PU in race 7 (so not having to wait till mid season), they have tended to be pretty reliable last few years

[diffuser]

Fix realibity and integration chassis problems first.what will a slightly more powerful engine do if a gearbox can't handle a detuned engine. These team can't even finish half a race.they should have joined partnerships with mclaren or redbull on gearbox side.

Sure, and you take a Redbull or McLaren gearbox made for their chassis and especially for their engine, how do you make it work with the Honda engine . It doesn't make sense, rather they should have asked Honda to make the gearbox, but as someone said it was difficult to integrate it with the suspension and chassis, in short they had to do an integration job in close contact, which is evidently missing. I expected more from Cowell on this. Now it is said that he is in Japan, because it is true that the ADUO is valid from Game 6, but you can start development now and have it completed by Game 6. Is there some clause that forces you to start development after Game 6? If so, we're in trouble.But I don't think so, I quote "diffuser" who usually knows everything about the regulations .

From the Spanish side, they were saying Honda are planning on bringing the new PU in race 7 (so not having to wait till mid season), they have tended to be pretty reliable last few years

I haven't seen anything from Honda except that one document some person translated that said Honda was on target. That was after the last test.

[ispano6]

I don't think people within the team are blaming anything other than time. It is always easy to say in hindsight what the team could have done to be better prepared and that onus usually falls on leadership. In this case it could be Stroll Sr. or Andy Green not being on top of what they could have been prior to Newey's arrival. Should Green have been more closely scrutinizing the power unit regulation verbiage and checking to see if Honda was reading in-between the lines? Could a gearbox been developed the prior season to mate with the Mercedes unit such that they could already be familiar again with "teething" troubles of their own design? Could it be that the requested packaging of the drivetrain is a debilitating factor that requires clever solutions that aren't legal or are in the gray area or simply cannot be fabricated at the track? Yes, Yes, Yes, but all in hindsight.

The current voice of the team that I pay the most attention to is Mike Krack. He to me, right now, is like the Franz Tost that AMR needs. Without Tost, there would have been no RedBull Honda championships. I hope Krack can be the bridge that Tost was.

Dude, I don't know where you got this information but Andrew Green is no longer working in F1 with Aston Martin. And Regarding Tost, it was not him who was responsible, but Redbull itself who lent the Honda engine to Toro Rosso to test it and the following year they also adopted it (in 2019). He was simply the team principal and as a customer team he followed the directives of Red Bull, Horner above all.

Woah. You need to calm down.
Where did I say Andrew Green is no longer working in F1 with Aston Martin?

2nd, I am Japanese and know a thing or two about Honda from the Honda perspective thanks to former employees, retirees, current HRC staff. When I credit Tost, it was Tost who kept Honda from leaving. It was Tost who had a level head and never raised a voice in anger or blame. He was the opposite of Eric Boullier.

When I credit Tost, I am crediting how Honda MEGA appreciated Tost's respectfulness and approach. None of this blame game that Alonso and his camp seem to always bring. I would rather Krack as the voice of AMR than Pedro De LaRosa.

[Leon Kennedy]

Fix realibity and integration chassis problems first.what will a slightly more powerful engine do if a gearbox can't handle a detuned engine. These team can't even finish half a race.they should have joined partnerships with mclaren or redbull on gearbox side.

Sure, and you take a Redbull or McLaren gearbox made for their chassis and especially for their engine, how do you make it work with the Honda engine . It doesn't make sense, rather they should have asked Honda to make the gearbox, but as someone said it was difficult to integrate it with the suspension and chassis, in short they had to do an integration job in close contact, which is evidently missing. I expected more from Cowell on this. Now it is said that he is in Japan, because it is true that the ADUO is valid from Game 6, but you can start development now and have it completed by Game 6. Is there some clause that forces you to start development after Game 6? If so, we're in trouble.But I don't think so, I quote "diffuser" who usually knows everything about the regulations .

From the Spanish side, they were saying Honda are planning on bringing the new PU in race 7 (so not having to wait till mid season), they have tended to be pretty reliable last few years

So we have to hope that they are in the top 10 consistently until game 6. Because if you always score 0 points, then 300 points remain from game 7 onwards available (by the way if you win them all) and it would be It was impossible to win the championship at that point. But yes, maybe I was the one hoping for Fernando's third title, sadly.