Aston Martin

‘Is this the end?' Aston Martin need Newey to ‘shine’ or else…

Kerry Violet Saturday 21 February 2026 21:15

Photo: © IMAGO

Aston Martin's 2026 F1 car is reportedly far from ready for the first round of the upcoming season, despite the fact the grid will be set for the race in Melbourne in just two weeks time.

Lawrence Stroll poured money into his F1 squad hoping to make them championship challengers in a matter of years, but even with F1 design legend Adrian Newey on board with the project, Aston Martin's success timeline appears to be lengthening by the day.

Newey was initially brought in as Aston Martin's managing technical partner but has now also taken on the challenge of balancing the team's technical demands with the role of team principal.

And despite the British engineer's previous work in F1 having yielded 25 championships, his first pre-season testing with Aston Martin could not have gone any worse.

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Aston Martin's 2026 testing shows Honda must do their homework

After only getting in two short days of running at last month's Barcelona shakedown, it was crucial for Aston Martin to learn as much as they could about the AMR26 in Bahrain.

The first week in Sakhir prompted Lance Stroll to claim his team were 'four seconds' behind the top teams, and the second week saw the Canadian driver bring out a red flag after taking a trip into the gravel thanks to an incident that was said to not be driver related.

On Thursday, Fernando Alonso then took to the track once again but was forced to pull to the side of the Bahrain International Circuit and step out of his new vehicle, with mechanics rushing to remove the car with gloves on after it was deemed to be in an unsafe condition.

But disaster struck on Friday when Aston Martin's works partner Honda issued a statement that declared they had been forced into only doing limited runs, after Alonso's incident had proved there was an issue with the battery.

After Stroll got back in the car, he only completed six laps across the morning and the evening, with the team wrapping up their testing programme despite there still being two hours and 20 minutes remaining on the clock.

Following their disastrous final week of testing, Spanish F1 commentator Antonio Lobato took to social media platform 'X' to write: "Aston Martin's pre-season has now come to an end with the confirmation that Stroll will not be racing anymore. Six laps today.

"I'll try to be clear. Honda has a problem, presumably localised, that breaks the battery. As the problem cannot be solved in Bahrain, Japan is asking not to race so as not to use up more batteries, which would compromise future races and the budget limit that the engine manufacturers also have.

Lobato then implored Aston Martin to work with Honda to find the issue before the new campaign kicks off, noting that there was still hope that Newey could save them.

"The only obsession right now is to solve this problem before Australia so that they can aspire to finish the race. If the reliability problem is solved, the second problem, the lack of engine power, will still be there, but that is not a priority right now. The only thing that matters is gaining reliability.

"If they do, Aston Martin will arrive in Melbourne having tested practically nothing, greener than their bodywork and with a complicated medium-term outlook. Is this the end? No, but we will have to be patient.

"If Honda does its homework and Newey lives up to his genius profile, Aston Martin could shine in the second half of the season."