2026 Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team

[FNTC]

From the Honda Power unit thread:

Again the race is saying honda is behind in battery tech (at 3:43). That's now at least the second time they've mentioned it. Personally I don't buy it at all. How could they possibly know this.

[Ground Effect]

Aston Martin and Adrian Newey are not doing themselves any favors by airing Honda's affairs here....That is absolutely one way to sour the relationship. What leaked from the F1 commmision meeting should not have leaked.

You can't be certain it was leaked by Adrian or Aston Martin. They made this report to the commission, it was very likely an official report. Anyone within the commission could have leaked it, as they usually do. Don't jump to conclusions over who's trying to make who look bad. Besides, news like this always comes out.

[Kamel]

I feel sorry for Honda, of course, that it now has the eternal label "GP2 engine" on all social media, but how is it possible that they need this cleanup every time to build a normal engine?
"Then there's 50 feet of crap, and then there's us" - AMR describing quote from Moneyball

[Ashwinv16]

Aston Martin and Adrian Newey are not doing themselves any favors by airing Honda's affairs here....That is absolutely one way to sour the relationship. What leaked from the F1 commmision meeting should not have leaked.

You can't be certain it was leaked by Adrian or Aston Martin. They made this report to the commission, it was very likely an official report. Anyone within the commission could have leaked it, as they usually do. Don't jump to conclusions over who's trying to make who look bad. Besides, news like this always comes out.

Also You cant charge a battery to a power output, not how electricity works. 2MJ is enough to power a motor to 350kW down the straight to reach 320kmph with a detuned engine (lets say 400hp considering they topped out at 11k revs). Not to mention Aston hitting 328 kmph multiple times when they pushed the engine a bit and Aston being able to hit 300+kmph in sector 3. yeah so horse --- despite it being from BBC sport or Adrian just gaslighting the compression issue.

The obvious issue seems to be reliability more than power despite stating that they have focused on 90% reliability. Along with effective fixes, the car simply needs more cooling as its very clearly the car with least cooling of all cars on the grid. Racing Bulls comes close but they have a massive air box. They need a bigger sidepod intake and Airbox for sure so with that said....

Like they mentioned unlike many cars that came to the test the Aston will look very different. My guess is with bigger cooling inlets for sure to start off along with other aero changes including more downforce in the front and revised front nose. They are Definitely also losing the overbite for a bigger opening similar to the Mclaren (hopefully) in Australia as well as the fact that the engine and battery will also be redesigned with all the current failures in consideration. But its is going to be a massive lottery in terms of how much they gain. They could gain nothing or they could gain a lot. They simply have to repeat what they did with Toro Rosso in 2018 but in two weeks instead of 2 months.

[Ashwinv16]

I also want to add a bit of history. It is to note that Honda gained a huge amount of power in 2018 with Toro Rosso in six grand prix in what they couldn't do for 2 years with Mclaren simply due to the fact that Toro Rosso ran more cooling and GPS data showed it was already miles ahead of the Renault so much that the gearbox ratio of the Toro Rosso couldn't keep up with the new power. Yest ehey went through like 5 power units and like 6 or 7 mguk but 3-4 of them were were upgraded part and towards the second half they suffer no major mechanical faults. In the next 2 years they became the most powerful engine in terms of battery and close with the Merc overall pushing Ferrari to third(with Ferrari hitting reliability issues in 2022 where they were briefly first)

History has repeated itself with the size zero but unlike before as long as the car comes to Australia with more cooling and a more spacious sidepod, I am confident thing can turn around even faster than it did for Toro Rosso and Red bull and hoping Adrian Newey clocks this considering this is what is supposed to differentiate him from the engineering team that failed at Mclaren and that's why he is being paid to do. If is see the same car in terms of Aero in Australia or the Bahrain race still, well Alonso is just cursed and we wont see anything going well for the team and Adrian has been a waste of hire but he is known to be quick to fix his mistakes hope Honda also works with them for this.

[Jambier]

While we are speaking about crazy things:

- Could Honda just buy Renault 2026 engine IP ?
- The engine was rumored to be very good.
- When Mercedes visited Viry, they were impressed, and even told "You have some great features we haven't thought about" (source, some people I know that used to work there)

So I'm not saying to buy Viry, but the IP could give them great ideas, benchmark and so on.

I also know that top Viry engineer left immediately to Ferrari because Fred Vasseur hired them, so I believe Ferrari already knows a lot about this engine

[PlatinumZealot]

I see why Andy Cowell had to be let go now. He did a poor management of the new Honda relationship. All at Aston Martin knew the Honda Engine ending up being shite due to very poor targets and demands set by Andy.

[Waz]

Aston Martin and Adrian Newey are not doing themselves any favors by airing Honda's affairs here....That is absolutely one way to sour the relationship. What leaked from the F1 commmision meeting should not have leaked.

It wasn't an interview, it was a meeting of the Sporting Commission, probably to discuss major concerns the teams have.

Honda wouldn't be getting any flack if they just designed the engine properly and left failed concepts behind.

[diffuser]

I also want to add a bit of history. It is to note that Honda gained a huge amount of power in 2018 with Toro Rosso in six grand prix in what they couldn't do for 2 years with Mclaren simply due to the fact that Toro Rosso ran more cooling and GPS data showed it was already miles ahead of the Renault so much that the gearbox ratio of the Toro Rosso couldn't keep up with the new power. Yest ehey went through like 5 power units and like 6 or 7 mguk but 3-4 of them were were upgraded part and towards the second half they suffer no major mechanical faults. In the next 2 years they became the most powerful engine in terms of battery and close with the Merc overall pushing Ferrari to third(with Ferrari hitting reliability issues in 2022 where they were briefly first)

History has repeated itself with the size zero but unlike before as long as the car comes to Australia with more cooling and a more spacious sidepod, I am confident thing can turn around even faster than it did for Toro Rosso and Red bull and hoping Adrian Newey clocks this considering this is what is supposed to differentiate him from the engineering team that failed at Mclaren and that's why he is being paid to do. If is see the same car in terms of Aero in Australia or the Bahrain race still, well Alonso is just cursed and we wont see anything going well for the team and Adrian has been a waste of hire but he is known to be quick to fix his mistakes hope Honda also works with them for this.

The 2018 PU made more power cause it was a different PU from the 2015 or 2016. It was completely redesigned for 2017. Trust me. It wasn't cause Torro Roso didn't call it "size zero". Oddly it was even more compact than the 2015, 2016 version.

The term "size zero" are just words. They don't really mean anything to engineers. It's an advertising term for the passing fan. Honda tells the chassis team how much cooling it needs and the chassis team's job is to design cooling to meet those requirements. Now if the PU manufacturer has asked for X amount of cooling and the chassis gives X amount amount of cooling and the PU is over heating, there is a problem. Naturally the chassis is gonna try and give more cooling to get by but it's not the chassis fault or the so called "size zero". It's cause the PU isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing and it's overheating.

[Waz]

I also want to add a bit of history. It is to note that Honda gained a huge amount of power in 2018 with Toro Rosso in six grand prix in what they couldn't do for 2 years with Mclaren simply due to the fact that Toro Rosso ran more cooling and GPS data showed it was already miles ahead of the Renault so much that the gearbox ratio of the Toro Rosso couldn't keep up with the new power. Yest ehey went through like 5 power units and like 6 or 7 mguk but 3-4 of them were were upgraded part and towards the second half they suffer no major mechanical faults. In the next 2 years they became the most powerful engine in terms of battery and close with the Merc overall pushing Ferrari to third(with Ferrari hitting reliability issues in 2022 where they were briefly first)

History has repeated itself with the size zero but unlike before as long as the car comes to Australia with more cooling and a more spacious sidepod, I am confident thing can turn around even faster than it did for Toro Rosso and Red bull and hoping Adrian Newey clocks this considering this is what is supposed to differentiate him from the engineering team that failed at Mclaren and that's why he is being paid to do. If is see the same car in terms of Aero in Australia or the Bahrain race still, well Alonso is just cursed and we wont see anything going well for the team and Adrian has been a waste of hire but he is known to be quick to fix his mistakes hope Honda also works with them for this.

Did you forget that Honda finally abandoned the turbo in the V concept in 2018? It wasn't just "more cooling" from Torro Rosso.

And now it seems they are retrying the same miserable idea again this year and getting the same results.

[Ashwinv16]

I also want to add a bit of history. It is to note that Honda gained a huge amount of power in 2018 with Toro Rosso in six grand prix in what they couldn't do for 2 years with Mclaren simply due to the fact that Toro Rosso ran more cooling and GPS data showed it was already miles ahead of the Renault so much that the gearbox ratio of the Toro Rosso couldn't keep up with the new power. Yest ehey went through like 5 power units and like 6 or 7 mguk but 3-4 of them were were upgraded part and towards the second half they suffer no major mechanical faults. In the next 2 years they became the most powerful engine in terms of battery and close with the Merc overall pushing Ferrari to third(with Ferrari hitting reliability issues in 2022 where they were briefly first)

History has repeated itself with the size zero but unlike before as long as the car comes to Australia with more cooling and a more spacious sidepod, I am confident thing can turn around even faster than it did for Toro Rosso and Red bull and hoping Adrian Newey clocks this considering this is what is supposed to differentiate him from the engineering team that failed at Mclaren and that's why he is being paid to do. If is see the same car in terms of Aero in Australia or the Bahrain race still, well Alonso is just cursed and we wont see anything going well for the team and Adrian has been a waste of hire but he is known to be quick to fix his mistakes hope Honda also works with them for this.

The 2018 PU made more power cause it was a different PU from the 2015 or 2016. It was completely redesigned for 2017. Trust me. It wasn't cause Torro Roso didn't call it "size zero". Oddly it was even more compact than the 2015, 2016 version.

The term "size zero" are just words. They don't really mean anything to engineers. It's an advertising term for the passing fan. Honda tells the chassis team how much cooling it needs and the chassis team's job is to design cooling to meet those requirements. Now if the PU manufacturer has asked for X amount of cooling and the chassis gives X amount amount of cooling and the PU is over heating, there is a problem. Naturally the chassis is gonna try and give more cooling to get by but it's not the chassis fault or the so called "size zero". It's cause the PU isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing and it's overheating.

Yeah i did'nt say anything about changing the size zero. It's the cooling. The have to open the inlets up as well as the outlets.

[selvam_e2002]

whatever it is Honda and AMR marriage is not going good. If it continues for next few years, then AMR will switch engine.....

[zeph]

I see why Andy Cowell had to be let go now. He did a poor management of the new Honda relationship. All at Aston Martin knew the Honda Engine ending up being shite due to very poor targets and demands set by Andy.

This is such a weird take...

...got some links to back it up?

[Shakeman]

I don't know how these problems are a surprise?

How was the battery issue not discovered on the test bench?

6 laps of running on the last day because Honda fear cost cap implications of destroyed batteries. They're going through battery packs at a rate of knots.

Newey saying they'll have the best chassis in 8/9 races is just cope on an unbelievable level, the car handles like a supermarket trolly. Cadillac are the team who arrived with the lowest possible expectations and they could lap Aston in the first race.

[Jambier]

whatever it is Honda and AMR marriage is not going good. If it continues for next few years, then AMR will switch engine.....

- It is just the start.
- Honda can produce a good engine for 2027 and relationship will continue.

Still, having only one customer that is another car brand for Honda is weird.
I don't see Aston going back to being a customer team, and I don't see them do their own engine either