F1 2026: The Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin NIGHTMARE that even Adrian Newey may not stop

Aston Martin

The Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin F1 NIGHTMARE that even Adrian Newey may not stop

Aston Martin have endured a terrible start to 2026

Dan Ripley Global Editor

Professional F1 journalist and analyst

Sunday 15 February 2026 13:00 Updated: 14:34

It could only happen to Fernando Alonso, a high expectations F1 winter that evaporates to leave a horror show in waiting - and we are nowhere near the first race.

To get you up to speed (poor word choice, sorry Alonso fans), remember the promise of that first Aston Martin design under Adrian Newey that was going to turn them into title contenders?

Well... right now that car looks about as quick as a tortoise running through treacle - and there is little chance of complacent hares giving them time to catch up.

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The worrying signs were there. Turning up very late to the Barcelona shakedown and putting their car together when other teams were effectively packing theirs away after three days of running was not a good look.

But let's be fair. Brawn turned up late in the day in 2009 having shoehorned a Mercedes engine in their car and once they got out on track, Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello blew the opposition to smithereens despite the former Honda team nearly going out of business just months earlier.

So, the world waited to see what Newey and Aston Martin could deliver in Bahrain, and no matter how low you may have set your expectations - very few imagined they would be the slowest bunch on the grid across the three days of the test. Yes, even behind new team Cadillac who coming from the US have only just worked out a car has to do more than turn left twice a lap (I jest of course).

Why are Aston Martin slow in F1 testing?

The bare face of it is Lance Stroll admitted the team were about 4.5 seconds off the pace, and I promise you, no team wanting to win the championship is going to be doing that amount of sandbagging. You may argue Stroll is.... not as good as Alonso but the double world champion wasn't notably much quicker.

The cause of this has been speculated, Spanish media jumped on the 'Blame Honda' bandwagon, claiming they couldn't test the engines revs to higher than 11,000 RPM before it went kaboom. For reference, F1 cars should hit between 12,000-15,000 RPM. However this wasn't true as at the very least Stroll was hitting the lower end of that on his runs - but of course this still isn't ideal.

The truth is Honda don't get away blame free, but this looks like a perfect storm that left clues 13 months ago. Newey knows this too, he has admitted that by the time he got to Aston Martin in early March last year, the team were going to be four months behind their rivals in terms of developing their car.

That's not easy to haul back - you have to hope that all of your rivals somehow waste four months of efficiency. This is the pinnacle of motor racing, not a 21st century British Government.

You also have to not make mistakes yourself during this process. Newey's famed for designing cars that aggressively push the envelopes of the regulations and there are suggestions it hasn't meshed well with Honda's power unit.

Can Aston Martin fix their 2026 F1 car?

Good news is yes... oh you want to know when. Well, they have until the March 1 homologation to keep working on the Honda engine to try and get that as developed to be faster and more reliable. In such an early stage of the regulations, there is hope a lot can be learned in a short space of time. After March 1 though, that's it until the seventh race, although the development of the rest of the car can continue indefinitely costcap pending.

Former F1 star and Aston Martin representative Pedro de la Rosa said: "Yes, it can be fixed. In a short time? How short is short? It's not going to happen overnight. We still don't know what our limit is, as we're not optimising everything yet. We're trying to understand where we are. Can it be fixed? Only time will tell, but I'm confident because we have the tools."

For Alonso, he will hope the fixes come fast, he was reported to be seething at Aston Martin and Honda's false start and he has every right to be given he has been here before with McLaren and Honda between 2015 and 2017. When hoping for a wild card title challenge, he spent the season trying to drag cars into minor points positions.

The only good news for Alonso is that McLaren outfit's own issues with poor personnel were masked by Honda's bad engine, now he has Newey to help start an Aston Martin recovery. But is this comeback even one too big for Newey to mastermind? There’s a lot to fix in such a short space of time – to the point not even F1’s super genius is likely to have the answers in time.

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Written by

Dan Ripley - Global Editor

I've been a massive F1 fan since the mid 1990s and continue to study the history of the sport long before that. As an experienced motor sport reporter covering F1, MotoGP and the LeMans 24 Hour race, being part of GPFans has allowed me to work with a diverse team with all sorts of different backgrounds in watching the sport and given me a greater appreciation of F1.

View full biography

F1 Adrian Newey Fernando Alonso