Why has it gone so wrong for Aston Martin?

When Aston Martin’s new Formula One car first appeared in testing at the end of January, it attracted admiring glances in the pit lane.

The car’s temporary all-black color not only looks menacing, but also clearly sets it apart from all its competitors. These include innovations made famous by design legend Adrian Newey, who has been appointed Aston Martin’s managing technology partner since March last year.

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But as soon as the car started, reality became cruel. It was late and it stalled at the pit entrance after just four laps of its first day in Barcelona.

Aston Martin’s fortunes have hardly improved since.

As of the end of pre-season testing last week, the car was the slowest on site and had the lowest mileage.

As team owner Laurence Stroll walked around the paddock in Bahrain, his face betraying anger and despair, he looked like his world had hit rock bottom.

On several occasions, the car went off track due to numerous reliability issues, which made things difficult for the drivers. Aston Martin and Honda rarely speak publicly. Privately, no one wants to hide the truth. They were in trouble, and they knew it, and whatever went wrong — and there were many — would take time to fix.

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Promise, unfulfilled

Everything looks so promising

No Formula One team has greater expectations for the 2026 season than Aston Martin.

On paper, Stroll put together a dream combination, one that seemed certain to succeed.

Signing Newey in September 2024 appears to be the final piece of the puzzle for the Canadian billionaire to transform his team into a championship contender.

Stroll was signed several years ago to become Honda’s factory engine partner as Honda secured four consecutive drivers’ titles and two constructors’ titles with Red Bull and Max Verstappen between 2021-24.

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He funded a gleaming new factory, including a state-of-the-art wind tunnel and driver-in-the-loop simulator.

He assembled an enviable sponsorship portfolio of unlimited resources, including the full financial might of Saudi Aramco.

There was another legend in the cockpit, Fernando Alonso. Granted, he’s now in his 40s, but is undoubtedly still a major force behind the wheel.

Newey’s new cars have been duds so far

The past few years have not been easy for Aston Martin. It was a big step forward for Alonso to join the team for the first time at the start of 2023, with six podium finishes in the first eight races and a possible victory in Monaco, but he lost the race due to the wrong tire choice in late showers.

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But the team declined in the second half of that season as they failed to keep up with their opponents. The same situation happened in 2024, with a low starting point. By 2025, they were not competitive at all, and the standings fell from fifth to seventh in the previous two years.

Newey’s arrival should have heralded the start of a shift, especially since historically he has been hugely successful with rule changes, producing design concepts that have been copied by rivals – McLaren in 1998, Red Bull in 2009 and again in 2022.

The biggest rules change in F1 history in 2026 gives him the chance to do it again, this time for Aston Martin.

But the first cars produced under his leadership fell far short of expectations, which, in context, is not as surprising as it might seem.

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In F1, success comes from consistency, and that’s something Aston Martin hasn’t had in recent years. There have been significant changes in leadership, as well as at the top.

These include new recruits such as chief technical officer Enrico Cardile, who finally arrived in July after taking a year’s gardening leave from Ferrari.

But there were casualties. The most recent is Andy Cowell, the architect of successful Mercedes engines in the hybrid era. He was only named CEO in October 2024, but was demoted to other roles more than a year later after clashing with Newey.

Cowell now spends much of his time in Japan trying to help Honda sort out its problems.

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Aston Martin has played down expectations when it officially launched the fleet in early February, stressing that the project would take time to be successful.

Newey explained that his start in March put them several months behind other teams in terms of development.

The new 2026 aerodynamic regulations were finally officially released on January 2, 2025, two months before Newey officially started working at Aston Martin.

In fact, the team has been developing the 2026 car for much longer than that. The basics of car layout in the regulations have long been known, and teams are in working groups with the FIA ​​governing body to refine the details, so know where they are going.

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Sources say that when Newey took over in March 2026, he actually ordered the car to be redesigned according to his own ideas. As a result, the current car is at least a few months behind all competitors in terms of development. With a deficit like that, even he can’t work miracles.

Newey described Aston Martin as “one of the more extreme interpretations” of this year’s new rules.

Currently, in its undeveloped form, it is undoubtedly uncompetitive – slow and unpredictable. Maybe eventually it can be developed into a good car, but until Honda sort themselves out, it’s hard to tell.

Why is the Honda engine short of power?

Honda’s woes brought back painful memories from a decade ago.

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When it returned to F1 with McLaren in 2015, it was ill-prepared and spent three difficult seasons with an underpowered and unreliable engine. The parallels to now are obvious.

Why it was so unprepared this time is even more difficult to understand.

Honda officially exited F1 at the end of 2021, when Max Verstappen won his first world championship in a Honda-powered Red Bull.

A return to F1 with Aston Martin was announced in May 2023.

The argument to explain why it is now so behind is that Honda’s F1 engine program was essentially dismantled, with the engineers involved reassigned to other areas of the company in the 15 months between those two dates.

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However, Honda is not going away. Both Red Bull teams continued to use its engines until the end of last year.

Although development is frozen, the engine is still being upgraded every year as F1 rules allow modifications for reliability reasons. Every manufacturer in F1 has exploited this vulnerability to make performance upgrades in the name of improved reliability.

If Honda didn’t do this, it would gradually fall behind from 2022 to 2025, but that’s not the case.

On top of that, Honda representatives were involved in meetings about the new engine rules from start to finish – so they were involved in the U-turn at the start of 2023.

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The argument, though, is that without a fully dedicated F1 engine division, Honda lacks a team to design and build a new engine to comply with this year’s revised rules, and thus has to build one more or less from scratch.

But so does Red Bull. In 2020, when they announced their decision to build their own engine factory, they had nothing. The original plan was to form a partnership with Porsche, but the deal fell through in late summer 2022.

Considering Red Bull had to build a powertrain factory from scratch during this period and recruit an entirely new staff, their timeline is not that different from Honda’s.

So why is Honda so far away from where it wants to be? No answer has been provided for this yet.

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Alonso factor

The new car and engine partnership with Honda aims to improve reliability and performance, with Fernando Alonso among the drivers. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is.

Alonso joined McLaren from Ferrari in 2015, attracted by Honda’s potential. That potential was eventually realized, but by 2020/21 Honda and McLaren had long since parted ways, with Honda joining forces with Red Bull.

Meanwhile, Alonso’s career became a kind of living purgatory. One of the greatest drivers the sport has ever seen, he was reduced to fighting for scrap, setting motivational goals for himself instead of what he should be pursuing – wins and championships in F1.

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He last won in May 2013 and is now 44 years old. But his performance has remained at a high level, and he has more respect than ever from his peers on the track. Because of his talent and his ability to stay motivated in the face of everything.

The Newey-Honda-Aston Martin combination promised something positive for Alonso on paper, a last-ditch hope of returning to success and capping off his storied career. Either this year, when his current contract expires, or after another one expires, if glory seems feasible.

Instead, he found himself back ten years ago.

Alonso had spent his entire career waiting to team up with Newey, whose superior racing – and some bad luck – cost the Spaniard at least two world titles he should have won.

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Alonso has no doubt Newey can solve the problem. Who would? But after his last experience with Honda, can he really allow himself to believe that this can turn things around in the limited time he certainly has left?

Publicly, Alonso stayed positive, as he did with McLaren and Honda, save for one or two public slips when it all went too far.

“Of course, everything can be solved,” he said. “Short term and medium term. I don’t think there’s anything that’s impossible to fix.

“We will try to solve all the problems before Australia and then we will try to solve as many problems as possible in the first few games. Because (otherwise) it will be too late in the championship. But no, I am optimistic. I think there is a solution.”

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Alonso’s partner Melissa Jimenez is expecting their first child at the end of March.

The unfolding disaster at Aston Martin Honda is so recent that he hasn’t been asked about his thoughts on the future. But he was already thinking about what to do.

After what will undoubtedly be a very difficult year, will he roll the dice one last time and try to muster the energy and determination to get going again? Or should we just leave it at that?