Online Reporter
When Aston Martin’s new Formula 1 car first appeared in testing at the end of January, it drew admiring glances up and down the pit lane.
In its all-black temporary colour, the car not only looked menacing, but also noticeably different from all its rivals. It included the sort of innovations that have become famous from design legend Adrian Newey, installed as managing technical partner at Aston Martin since March last year.
But reality bit hard as soon as the car started to run. It was already late, and it managed just four laps on its first day in Barcelona before conking out at the entrance to the pit lane.
Aston Martin’s fortunes have barely improved since.
The car was the slowest in the field by the end of pre-season testing last week, and had done the fewest miles.
Team owner Lawrence Stroll looked like the bottom had fallen out of his world as he stalked the paddock in Bahrain, his face betraying a combination of anger and despair.
The few times the car was out on track amid myriad reliability problems, it looked a handful for the drivers.
Publicly, Aston Martin and Honda were saying little. Privately, no-one was trying to hide the reality.
They were in trouble, they knew it, and whatever was wrong — and it was a lot — would take time to fix.
It all looked so promising
No Formula 1 team looked towards the 2026 season with greater expectations than Aston Martin.
On paper, Stroll had put together a dream combination, one that seemed guaranteed to produce success.
The signing of Newey in September 2024 seemed to be the final piece of the jigsaw the Canadian billionaire was creating to turn his team into championship contenders.
In the previous years, Stroll had already inked a deal to become the factory engine partner of Honda, who won four consecutive drivers’ titles with Red Bull and Max Verstappen from 2021-24, and two constructors’ championships. He had funded a sparkling new factory, including a state-of-the-art wind tunnel and driver-in-the-loop simulator.
He had put together an enviable sponsorship portfolio of boundless resources, including the full financial might of the state of Saudi Arabia, through its national oil company.
And in the cockpit was another legend, Fernando Alonso. Ageing, certainly, now he is in his mid-40s, but still without question a major force behind the wheel.
The past few years have not been easy for Aston Martin. A major step forward at the start of 2023, when Alonso first joined the team, led to six podiums in the first eight races and what could have been a win in Monaco, lost only to a wrong tyre choice during a late shower of rain.
But in the second-half of that season the team slipped back, as they failed to keep up with the development rate of their rivals. The same happened in 2024, from a lower starting point, and in 2025 they were simply uncompetitive, slipping to seventh in the championship from fifth the previous two years.
Newey’s arrival was supposed to herald the start of the turnaround, especially as historically he has aced regulation changes, producing design philosophies that were followed by rivals — in 1998 with McLaren, and again in 2009 and 2022 with Red Bull.
The biggest rule change in F1 history for 2026 gave him the chance to do it again, this time for Aston Martin.
But the first car produced under his leadership has fallen far short of expectations, and a glance at the context makes this less of a surprise than it appears on the surface.
In F1, success comes from stability, and that is the last thing Aston Martin have had in the past few years.
There has been major leadership churn, and right at the top, too.
This has included new recruits, such as chief technical officer Enrico Cardile, who finally arrived in July after a year on gardening leave from Ferrari.
But also casualties. The most recent was Andy Cowell, the architect of the success of the Mercedes engine in the hybrid era. He was installed as chief executive officer only in October 2024, but just over a year later, after a clash with Newey, was demoted to a different role.
Cowell is now spending much of his time in Japan, trying to help Honda sort itself out. —BBC
