Bizarre Aston Martin F1 problem returns to give Adrian Newey more headaches despite updates

Photo: © IMAGO

Aston Martin

Bizarre Aston Martin problem returns to give Adrian Newey more headaches despite updates

Adrian Newey has brought lots of upgrades to the AMR26

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Saturday 25 July 2026 22:30

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Aston Martin are faced a repeat of a problem which plagued their early season, despite having brought a plethora of upgrades to the F1 Hungarian Grand Prix.

The team have changed almost everything on their AMR26 chassis this weekend, bringing 16 upgrades in the hope that they will be able to fight closer to the midfield teams.

Design legend Adrian Newey - who is both team principal and managing technical partner at Aston Martin - has been working hard to try and improve the chassis ever since it became clear in early 2026 that Aston Martin were lagging behind the entire grid.

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But while the chassis now seems to be in a better place, Aston Martin were still struggling with their Honda power unit during Hungarian Grand Prix practice on Friday.

Honda have suffered with reliability and power output issues for much of 2026, and an upgrade to their power unit is not arriving until after the summer break.

But bizarrely, the power unit seemed to have gone backwards at the Hungarian Grand Prix, with the two drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll suffering with the vibrations that were very clearly an issue during the first few race weekends of 2026.

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Aston Martin's power unit vibrations

Oscillations were visible on both drivers’ onboard cameras during FP1 at the Hungarian GP, even though Alonso did manage to put his car in P13 in that session, an improvement on their recent form.

Newey explained this during the team principals' press conference, revealing that the power unit issues did seem to be back at the Hungaroring.

"The oscillations, yes, that's really a question for Honda," Newey said. "They can see it on the data and they are working on the solution."

In FP2, only Alonso participated, after a suspected rear suspension failure for Stroll, but the 44-year-old Spaniard suggested that the vibrations had actually got worse compared to FP1.

Speaking on team radio, Alonso's engineer said: "So for us the vibrations are the same," before Alonso replied: "No it’s worse."

However, Alonso did confirm that the issue had been quickly resolved during Friday's afternoon session, allowing Aston Martin to put an early season nightmare quickly behind them.

He said: "I noticed vibrations especially in FP1 and they were more or less resolved in FP2"

F1 RESULTS: Hungarian GP practice times and positions