Aston Martin is a 'funeral': F1 insider reveals team shocked by Honda secret

The struggling team could not have had a worse start to 2026

Chris Deeley

Friday 6 March 2026 11:55 Updated: 13:58

Aston Martin have reached the point in their disastrous 2026 F1 season where things can no longer 'go from bad to worse', and we haven't even had a race yet.

The dial has hit 'worst', and the stopper won't let it go any further. The only option now is to 'go from worst to still worst, but with flashing lights on'.

Actually, scrap that. We just got told they don't have enough batteries for the lights ahead of Sunday's season-opening Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park in Melbourne.

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Friday allowed fans to see the team in action for the first time since revelations about the crippling levels of vibration in their first Adrian Newey-designed car...briefly. Fernando Alonso (0) and Lance Stroll (3) combined for just three laps in FP1, before making a slightly better fist of things in FP2...before Stroll's car developed an issue.

The one ray of sunshine, shining so weakly through the stormclouds that it takes a team of scientists to see it? Alonso's best lap in FP2 was within 107 per cent of the fastest time in the session, so he and Stroll just might be able to make it to the start line on Sunday.

Insider: The desolation and helplessness are tremendous

Spanish F1 insider and DAZN presenter Antonio Lobato, known to have close links to Fernando Alonso, wrote in between sessions on Friday: "Aston Martin is a funeral. The desolation and helplessness are tremendous.

"Newey confirms that when they visited Honda and discovered the team assigned to F1, it was a complete surprise for which they had not been warned. Most of the senior engineers who had been involved in F1 in previous years had been reassigned to other projects..."

Bleak. Almost as bleak as Newey speaking about Honda on Friday, when he revealed that most of the staff who had made the Japanese company an F1 powerhouse had left for other projects – 'solar panels or whatever' – and been replaced by faces without F1 experience.

The designer claims he was unaware of the issues until he, Lawrence Stroll and Andy Cowell visited Honda to investigate rumours that the engines would be down on power.

He revealed: "Out of that came the fact that many of the original workforce had not returned when they restarted. When they reformed, a lot of the original group had it now transpires disbanded and gone to work on solar panels or whatever. A lot of the group were new to F1 and didn't have the experience they had previous.

"Plus, when they came back in 2023 that was the first year of the budget cap for engines. All their rivals had been developing away through 2021-2022, with continuity, existing team and free of budget cap.

"They re-entered with, let's say, only, I'm guessing, 30% of their original base staff and now in a budget cap era so they started very much on the back foot and unfortunately they have not been able to catch up."

Still. Good news about the 107 per cent thing.

F1 HEADLINES: Newey to face the music as FIA announce Australian Grand Prix U-turn

Aston Martin Adrian Newey Australian Grand Prix Honda