2026 Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team

[Leon Kennedy]

Guys, outbursts are a consequence of a job poorly done. He's there driving tractors always at the limit. He does his job concretely, those who make mistakes are criticized. It works everywhere in this way. Only rookie/inexperienced drivers don't let off steam. Do you expect Verstappen to be comfortable if Red Bull isn't fighting for the podium this year? He might retire tomorrow.

[delsando53]

Can they delay engine, battery, and transmission homologation? Aston martin could play up big safety risks like thermal runaway in the Energy Store (battery), where overheating could lead to fires or explosions right next to the driver, putting their life at serious risk during high-speed crashes or hard braking with that 350kW MGU-K power

If a team argues their current setup is too dangerous to run in races because of this ( they might skip early events while pushing the FIA for a longer homologation extension, say a few extra months beyond March 1, to fix it with reliability upgrades allowed for safety reasons

To pile on the delay, throw in requests for rule clarifications on ambiguities, like how exactly they measure the 16:1 max compression ratio in the engine if the FIA drags on responding that buys more time without racing penalties, all while claiming it's to avoid driver death risks and ensure fair compliance.

[ispano6]

I simply wish there was a way to negotiate down the fines encountered for not showing up in Australia, and for sponsors to accept a pro-rated discount for Aston Martin not fulfilling contract obligations for one race. It would be beneficial for Aston Martin not to take a budget cap hit and use 1 of its 4 engines allocated on an engine that is presently useless. The big picture has to be considered here.

How do you know what they will show up with in AUS? Given this logic, they shouldn't haven attended testing.

That's a wrong analogy. U can’t really compare a 'GP weekend' with 'Testing days'.
There are specific objectives and expectations from each team on a GP weekend. If a team is not capable of even attempting the objectives or expectations ; how can they participate? I can understand the legal obligations etc.

There is a high possibility ,AM wont even have a car ; which fulfills all the criteria to run during a race weekend. What are they going to do on the track? Pit stop practice?

Each race weekend is also a test weekend. Every race weekend results in learnings and developments. F1 teams aren't allowed to run their cars elsewhere unless it's a filming day or some other arrangement with limited running.
Why anyone would suggest to NOT show up to a race weekend just goes to show how much limited understanding people have about developing F1 cars.

[bigblue]

Not F1-related, but since there were some comments about finances, just for interest, Aston Martin road cars really don't sell very many do they!? Last year, 5448. Better cars than ever before, but the company is still a work in progress.

[aberracus]

There's no real relation between road cars Aston Martin and Aston Martin F1, since last year.

[Rodak]

This is an opportunity to have additional mileage with 2 cars whereas they've only managed with one thus far. The only way out of this is data, and the more miles they can get the better that data will be in giving them and Honda an idea of the way(s) out. I cannot see how any (serious) team would pass that up. Yes it might be embarrasing, but McLaren had that, faced that, then worked stuff out and got correlation and titles as a result.

This is really going to be a rough start with two races, Oz and China, back to back, leaving very little time to do anything except show up.

[WardenOfTheNorth]

Can they delay engine, battery, and transmission homologation? Aston martin could play up big safety risks like thermal runaway in the Energy Store (battery), where overheating could lead to fires or explosions right next to the driver, putting their life at serious risk during high-speed crashes or hard braking with that 350kW MGU-K power

If a team argues their current setup is too dangerous to run in races because of this ( they might skip early events while pushing the FIA for a longer homologation extension, say a few extra months beyond March 1, to fix it with reliability upgrades allowed for safety reasons

To pile on the delay, throw in requests for rule clarifications on ambiguities, like how exactly they measure the 16:1 max compression ratio in the engine if the FIA drags on responding that buys more time without racing penalties, all while claiming it's to avoid driver death risks and ensure fair compliance.

So.... Lie to the FIA??

How would that be better than using the first few races to get extra mileage on everything??

[CHT]

Question is, would any theoretical new owners keep the AM name etc??

Lawrence Stroll is purchasing the Aston Martin Formula 1 team's naming rights for £50million. So unless they are willing to pay to buy it then they will need to change the name.


Saudi Arabia F1 team or some variation of it.

Aramco F1

How good would it be if the Saudi Jordanian Investment Fund bought the team and renamed it as Jordan F1 lol

In all seriousness though, I don’t see Stroll Sr walking away any time soon. Stroll Jr on the other hand…..

The other way to look at this is that AM has terminate their sponsorship deal with AMR to cut cost, which is around 25m per year in sponsorship to F1 team, while LS got the F1 team to pay 50m to AM for its naming rights.

For AM (car division), that is a damn good deal because
1) They dont need to pay AMR 25m per year and to give free cars to their drivers
2) AM still enjoying brand exposure in F1 because of the naming right
3) AM get 50m of cash injection in return.

Aston Martin cuts 20% of workforce as losses widen
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp9m8n2vx0mo

[V10FURY]

How do you know what they will show up with in AUS? Given this logic, they shouldn't haven attended testing.

That's a wrong analogy. U can’t really compare a 'GP weekend' with 'Testing days'.
There are specific objectives and expectations from each team on a GP weekend. If a team is not capable of even attempting the objectives or expectations ; how can they participate? I can understand the legal obligations etc.

There is a high possibility ,AM wont even have a car ; which fulfills all the criteria to run during a race weekend. What are they going to do on the track? Pit stop practice?

Each race weekend is also a test weekend. Every race weekend results in learnings and developments. F1 teams aren't allowed to run their cars elsewhere unless it's a filming day or some other arrangement with limited running.
Why anyone would suggest to NOT show up to a race weekend just goes to show how much limited understanding people have about developing F1 cars.

I have been watching F1 since 1985 and cannot think of too many worse pre season testing debacles than this Aston Martin car this season. Flying this turd burger all the way to Melbourne, and then China for the first two races for what exactly? What running can they learn from if they don't have enough parts to drive for more than 6 laps at low speed like in Bahrain last Friday? That is a huge red flag as they did not have battery reserves to even allow the car to be driven quickly. What other spares are they missing? Do they have enough parts to build 2 cars? At this point nothing is certain, but there will be no hiding next Friday in Melbourne if they attend.

Running poorly and having 2 DNF's ensures they get paid and not fined. So of course they must attend the races. Staying at the factory for an extra 2 weeks and trying to fix the issues they are facing is probably a much better use of their limited resources. Unless Honda can pull a rabbit out of the hat and they have a fix for all of the issues they have with the motor it will be a rough start. Does Aston have a new gearbox that can actually work with the motor next week. Are the battery packs working properly now and the engine can harvest at 350KW, and deploy. If they can do all of that then they should be in Melbourne and China to run miles, tune the chassis, learn about the set up, and get the car into a good window. If they have a giant pile of crap in the engine bay that is the same as Bahrain last Friday then they are not going to learn much at all tooling around. They were not 2012 HRT bad at least, but here are the numbers which paint a pretty bleak picture:

Honda pre-season issues:

2015 Mclaren-Honda engine issues: 380 laps
2017 Mclaren-Honda engine issues: 425 laps

2026 Aston Martin- Honda engine issues 399 Laps



Let's hope this is not a repeat of those years for Aston Martin's partnership with Honda. Does Lawrence Stroll have a performance clause for this partnership? If Honda fail to meet certain performance/reliability targets, can they unwind this deal? If by race 8 they have a not come up with a solution, then they should be looking for an exit and ask Audi for their powertrain set up. They are supplying only 1 team and might have capacity next year to add Aston Martin. Or perhaps Honda can fix their mess in season and build a winner.......time will tell.

[ispano6]

That's a wrong analogy. U can’t really compare a 'GP weekend' with 'Testing days'.
There are specific objectives and expectations from each team on a GP weekend. If a team is not capable of even attempting the objectives or expectations ; how can they participate? I can understand the legal obligations etc.

There is a high possibility ,AM wont even have a car ; which fulfills all the criteria to run during a race weekend. What are they going to do on the track? Pit stop practice?

Each race weekend is also a test weekend. Every race weekend results in learnings and developments. F1 teams aren't allowed to run their cars elsewhere unless it's a filming day or some other arrangement with limited running.
Why anyone would suggest to NOT show up to a race weekend just goes to show how much limited understanding people have about developing F1 cars.

I have been watching F1 since 1985 and cannot think of too many worse pre season testing debacles than this Aston Martin car this season. Flying this turd burger all the way to Melbourne, and then China for the first two races for what exactly? What running can they learn from if they don't have enough parts to drive for more than 6 laps at low speed like in Bahrain last Friday? That is a huge red flag as they did not have battery reserves to even allow the car to be driven quickly. What other spares are they missing? Do they have enough parts to build 2 cars? At this point nothing is certain, but there will be no hiding next Friday in Melbourne if they attend.

Running poorly and having 2 DNF's ensures they get paid and not fined. So of course they must attend the races. Staying at the factory for an extra 2 weeks and trying to fix the issues they are facing is probably a much better use of their limited resources. Unless Honda can pull a rabbit out of the hat and they have a fix for all of the issues they have with the motor it will be a rough start. Does Aston has a new gearbox that can actually work with the motor next week. Are the battery packs working properly now and the engine can harvest at 350KW, and deploy. If they can do all of that then they should be in Melbourne and China to run miles, tune the chassis, learn about the set up, and get the car into a good window. If they have a giant pile of crap in the engine bay that is the same as Bahrain last Friday then they are not going to learn much at all tooling around. They were not 2012 HRT bad at least, but here are the numbers which paint a pretty bleak picture:

Honda pre-season issues:

2015 Mclaren-Honda engine issues: 380 laps
2017 Mclaren-Honda engine issues: 425 laps

2026 Aston Martin- Honda engine issues 399 Laps



Let's hope this is not a repeat of those years for Aston Martin's partnership with Honda. Does Lawrence Stroll have a performance clause for this partnership? If Honda fail to meet certain performance/reliability targets, can they unwind this deal? If by race 8 they have a not come up with a solution, then they should be looking for an exit and ask Audi for their powertrain set up. They are supplying only 1 team and might have capacity next year to add Aston Martin. Or perhaps Honda can fix their mess in season and build a winner.......time will tell.

I've been following F1 since 1986 and can't remember a season when Honda or a properly funded team decided not to show up just because their car was slow or they wanted to save face from embarrassment. I can understand if you don't have the FUNDS to compete/travel, but racers are racers. Honda rises from failure, it's a cyclical pattern.

You can't have a Cinderella story without Cinderella trashed talked and thrown under the bus by the family, right. Just wait and see how it unfold instead of demanding an unreasonable expectation that the "9th best" team last year (as Alonso put it) magically would be fighting for championships. It's not like Honda forgot how to build engines. It's a new Formula. The teams they're up against have been gelling for decades but as one wise pundit put it, if things aren't breaking down in testing then you didn't push the limits in development. There is some truth to this.

[Rodak]

Good comment and to the point with their options. As to your lead in...

I have been watching F1 since 1985 and cannot think of too many worse pre season testing debacles than this Aston Martin car this season.

I've been watching for too many years to even want to think about it, but... previously teams were not limited in their testing; Schumacher and Ferrari basically tested constantly. Aston, obviously, couldn't have done that as they had no car ready even for the group tests, but it certainly would help if they could test between races. Oh well, here we are and good luck to them, as they need it.

[CHT]

That's a wrong analogy. U can’t really compare a 'GP weekend' with 'Testing days'.
There are specific objectives and expectations from each team on a GP weekend. If a team is not capable of even attempting the objectives or expectations ; how can they participate? I can understand the legal obligations etc.

There is a high possibility ,AM wont even have a car ; which fulfills all the criteria to run during a race weekend. What are they going to do on the track? Pit stop practice?

Each race weekend is also a test weekend. Every race weekend results in learnings and developments. F1 teams aren't allowed to run their cars elsewhere unless it's a filming day or some other arrangement with limited running.
Why anyone would suggest to NOT show up to a race weekend just goes to show how much limited understanding people have about developing F1 cars.

I have been watching F1 since 1985 and cannot think of too many worse pre season testing debacles than this Aston Martin car this season. Flying this turd burger all the way to Melbourne, and then China for the first two races for what exactly? What running can they learn from if they don't have enough parts to drive for more than 6 laps at low speed like in Bahrain last Friday? That is a huge red flag as they did not have battery reserves to even allow the car to be driven quickly. What other spares are they missing? Do they have enough parts to build 2 cars? At this point nothing is certain, but there will be no hiding next Friday in Melbourne if they attend.

Running poorly and having 2 DNF's ensures they get paid and not fined. So of course they must attend the races. Staying at the factory for an extra 2 weeks and trying to fix the issues they are facing is probably a much better use of their limited resources. Unless Honda can pull a rabbit out of the hat and they have a fix for all of the issues they have with the motor it will be a rough start. Does Aston have a new gearbox that can actually work with the motor next week. Are the battery packs working properly now and the engine can harvest at 350KW, and deploy. If they can do all of that then they should be in Melbourne and China to run miles, tune the chassis, learn about the set up, and get the car into a good window. If they have a giant pile of crap in the engine bay that is the same as Bahrain last Friday then they are not going to learn much at all tooling around. They were not 2012 HRT bad at least, but here are the numbers which paint a pretty bleak picture:

Honda pre-season issues:

2015 Mclaren-Honda engine issues: 380 laps
2017 Mclaren-Honda engine issues: 425 laps

2026 Aston Martin- Honda engine issues 399 Laps



Let's hope this is not a repeat of those years for Aston Martin's partnership with Honda. Does Lawrence Stroll have a performance clause for this partnership? If Honda fail to meet certain performance/reliability targets, can they unwind this deal? If by race 8 they have a not come up with a solution, then they should be looking for an exit and ask Audi for their powertrain set up. They are supplying only 1 team and might have capacity next year to add Aston Martin. Or perhaps Honda can fix their mess in season and build a winner.......time will tell.

Did you missed out on Mclaren MP4/18, a Newey's car that didn't race due to cooling, engine, and gearbox problems.

[diffuser]

Lawrence Stroll is purchasing the Aston Martin Formula 1 team's naming rights for £50million. So unless they are willing to pay to buy it then they will need to change the name.


Saudi Arabia F1 team or some variation of it.

Aramco F1

How good would it be if the Saudi Jordanian Investment Fund bought the team and renamed it as Jordan F1 lol

In all seriousness though, I don’t see Stroll Sr walking away any time soon. Stroll Jr on the other hand…..

The other way to look at this is that AM has terminate their sponsorship deal with AMR to cut cost, which is around 25m per year in sponsorship to F1 team, while LS got the F1 team to pay 50m to AM for its naming rights.

For AM (car division), that is a damn good deal because
1) They dont need to pay AMR 25m per year and to give free cars to their drivers
2) AM still enjoying brand exposure in F1 because of the naming right
3) AM get 50m of cash injection in return.

Aston Martin cuts 20% of workforce as losses widen
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp9m8n2vx0mo

There is no outstanding loans for AMR GP. The lost money over the last fewer years is the £200 Million they payed for the 3 new buildings. They will stop encouring those cost in tge next couple of years. I don't see any financial problems with AMR GP. The Aston Martin motor car company is different story and is only 25% owner by Yew Tree/LS.

[edu2703]

Honestly, I don't see the point in Aston Martin skipping the Australian GP.

Risking fines and falling out with sponsors, just to salvage face from a embarrasing performance in Australia, is ridiculous in my opinion. I think withdrawing is even more embarrasing than at least trying, as it's basically an admission of failure for the team, regardless of whether the "fixed" engine will only be available in China.

I believe Honda should bring something new in time for Australia, and that would be an opportunity to test these new things before the "fixed" PU is available in China.

[AR3-GP]

Having to run two "dummy cars" that have the "wrong" components is costly in the budget cap. Also, PU problems are more costly in the 2026 budget cap scheme where reliability changes are no longer "Free".