After a long season of struggles, Aston Martin will finally bring a substantially revised car to the next race in Hungary. For Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, the Belgian GP is a race to be endured before they finally get their hands on the eagerly-awaited revised Aston Martin AMR26 in Hungary next weekend.
The decision to go for a substantially upgraded car was made by Adrian Newey not long after the first pre-season tests revealed just how poor the car was in its initial guise, while Honda also under-delivered on the power unit side. It was a bold decision to abandon F1’s traditional path of step-by-step updates for wholesale changes, but given the restraints of the cost cap – and an acceptance that incremental improvements were not going to be enough – it seemed like a logical plan.
Assuming that all the parts come together as scheduled, a lighter car with a new aero concept will be seen in Budapest, the last race before the summer break. Honda will then bring a revised power unit to Zandvoort, the first event after the season resumes in late August, and perhaps only then will the team’s true potential for the remainder of 2026 be apparent.
View Price on AmazonThen, the hope in the Aston camp is that the AMR26 can start to challenge for points. The reality is that the gap to the opposition is huge, and has been inflated by the lack of those race-by-race improvements that others have benefited from. Consider that at the last race at Silverstone, a gain of two seconds would only have moved Aston ahead of Cadillac into 10th place in the pecking order.
“I think it’s difficult to put a number on the upgrade, or an estimation,” Alonso said on Thursday when asked by Road & Track about the potential. “Because I think we had enough experience of guessing the performance gains, and we didn't achieve those. I think it's more for the team proving direction, or right direction. I think the philosophy of the car maybe was not the correct one, and we are changing that. We are making different modifications to the car, reducing the weight.”
Alonso agreed that the exercise is about the team showing that it does know what it is doing. “A lot of effort from the factory to fix some of the problems that we saw at the beginning of the year,” he noted. “And more than putting a number, I think it is just a gain of trust, on what we are doing also for next year. I think we'll see next weekend, and maybe after the race next weekend we will have a better understanding.”
Alonso is cautious on the prospect of being able to fight for points, which would mean getting ahead of, or at least in the mix with, the likes of Williams, Haas, Audi, Racing Bulls, and Alpine. “We are now at the back, so if we can make that kind of a step that you fight for the points it will be an incredible step,” he said. “But we need to remain calm. I think there's going to be a couple of circuits that even with the upgraded car, it seems that we will not gain much – like Monza or you know this type of circuit.”
Source: roadandtrack.com
