Aston Martin announced this week that both Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso would be returning for another season in 2027. Of course, only Alonso’s future was in doubt given that Stroll’s father owns the team.
Alonso’s two main concerns have been the sub-optimal nature of the 2026 technical regulations and the disappointingly uncompetitive AMR26, which remains in the lower reaches of the midfield despite a major upgrade package added in Hungary.
With Adrian Newey superintending the car, great things were expected but this has not come to pass. Honda’s power unit has taken much of the blame for the underperformance, though the team has been at pains to present a united front. Newey himself has avoided the microphone since his bizarre press conference in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix weekend where he, in effect, threw the team’s power unit supplier under the bus.
In Malaysia, Stroll alluded to plans for next year and more doubts about the pace of development.
“I think the car is going to get a lot better,” he said. “We have a plan, a good direction. We know what we have to do to put downforce on the car and all that stuff. I think the big question mark is the engine. We don’t know how we’re going to be in the beginning of ’27, so we’ll see.
“We’re missing two seconds in engines, so it’s difficult. Places like Baku and Monza, when you’re missing two seconds in engine, there’s not much you can do. On the car side, we know we started late compared to everyone else, development for the new regulations.
“We made a big step in Budapest. I think we have a clear direction on what we have to do with car development, but we’re lacking between a second and two seconds, depending on the tracks, every weekend in engine. There’s not much we can do with that. So right now that’s really our weakness.”
Despite great expectations, Aston Martin is still racing the Cadillacs at the back of the grid
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
Honda revealed this week that it has already taken advantage of the second Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO) window. Since its internal combustion engine (ICE) had been measured to be more than 4% down on the current benchmark, the Red Bull-Ford ICE, Honda has been given more scope and resources to upgrade.
Although it initially planned to introduce just one upgrade this season, and focus its attention on a greatly revised power unit for next year, Honda changed course and has now introduced a second in the form of an upgraded turbocharger. It’s understood that turbo lag had been a contributory factor to driveability problems both drivers had been experiencing.
But harvesting and deploying the full permitted quantities of electrical energy also continue to be an issue. These are a principal input not only on peak straightline speed, but also on the length of time the power unit is able to sustain electrical boost before entering the mandatory ramp-down phase.
Of course, since Honda only supplies Aston Martin and has no other teams with which to compare performance using the same PU, it could also be the case that the AMR26 is aerodynamically draggy. When McLaren dissolved its relationship with Honda in 2017 and swapped to an alternative PU supplier, it soon discovered its car was part of the problem.
“The tracks with long straights are worse for us,” said Stroll. “You know, Budapest was probably our best race of the year, with just a lot of corners and not many straights. So, yeah, we have to work on the drivability stuff. That’s a big limitation for us and then just power down the straights.”
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