2026 Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team

[diffuser]

Horner seems less likely because he want's total control, which apparently why he was sacked from Red Bull.



Talk of Honda is carefully avoided.

"On the chassis side, we're quite a long way overweight. Some of that comes from the PU integration issues with Honda, "

Gone because they added something to manage vibrations, with a weight penalty. It sounds like a workaround, not a fix.

But how can they do that with the same engine? Taking so much weight out of the chassis that it compensates for the weight penalty caused by the integration issues?
Or did they find a way to otherwise deal with the vibration? It will be weird if they they found a solution for this PU, but the vibration comes back after the PU upgrade.

The only way the math works is if the weight they added to resolve the vibration issue was insignificant.
Remember you add weight to your wheels when you remove the vibrations from them, balance them. They put grams on to balance wheels.

It's maths without numbers, since we don't know any of them.
However wheel balancing doesn't seem to be relevant, or even similar. The chassis doesn't spin. The crankshaft and the rotor of the MGU does, and if adding or removing a bit of weight to them, they would have done that ages ago.

Yeah we just have that they're 15Kg overweight now vs being at the limit in Hungry.

They have said that the final vibration fixes, are supposed to be a change in the ICE mounts, come with the new ICE. So maybe additional weight saving in Netherlands?

[TyreSlip]

I hope this B spec is a serious step forward, but we are at round 9 of the championship, and Alonso’s car just died on the way to the grid, on the formation lap. In Q1 the Astons are 1.5 seconds slower than Cadillac now, and 2.4 seconds away from Williams. I think being extremely optimistic, the best the team could hope for is to get close to Williams, if the car doesn’t break down. I am not convinced Aston would go much faster in Q2 or Q3, unlike the other teams either. Now if they can find seconds per lap, without the new Honda power unit, then perhaps they can move further up the grid closer to Audi. Seeing Alonso trundling around 3 laps down, is pretty depressing stuff here. Hopefully Honda has found at least 40 horsepower, better deployment, more powerful recharging, and new batteries to help the team.

For your sake, you really should temper your expectations.

[Emag]

I think people should accept this is a failed project for this season (at the very least). They're always going to undersell the severity of the issues, because nobody wants to come out and say "yes, we are horrible at our job".

It's what happened in 2015 as well. This time it's not for the same reasons, but rush certainly played a role in it. Honda should learn to just say no to some requests. A power unit that compromises the chassis but outputs acceptable power is 100 times better than whatever they ended up with this season.

There isn't much to salvage for this season, which is why they should just use it as a testing platform so that the 2nd iteration next year isn't as embarrassing.

I said this in the beginning. There's just no way for them to get back from this absolute sh*tshow within the season. I have seen this movie before. It's not worth even having any sort of expectations for this team this season. You just have to hope they're not so mediocre next year.

[vas_04614]

Wonder if they will send one upgraded car after zandvoort to japan for integration testing with new engine

You mean after Hungary? Zandvoort is when the new engine debuts.

Newey stated that the car upgrades were not dependent on the new Honda iteration.

Yeah, thanks for correction

[LookingGlass]

Based on the last few years, the new upgrades should lead to 0.2 seconds slower than current form.

[Rikrikrik]

How they can trust in any number from new aero package without the new engine? how both things ( new aero and old engine) will be work nicelly togheter?

[Rikrikrik]

Based on the last few years, the new upgrades should lead to 0.2 seconds slower than current form.

It could actually get worse—coming from Aston Martin, nothing would surprise me anymore. After all, for the past three years, it’s been all talk and no action on the track; there’s no reason to believe things would be any different now until I actually see it happen.

[f1316]

I hope this B spec is a serious step forward, but we are at round 9 of the championship, and Alonso’s car just died on the way to the grid, on the formation lap. In Q1 the Astons are 1.5 seconds slower than Cadillac now, and 2.4 seconds away from Williams. I think being extremely optimistic, the best the team could hope for is to get close to Williams, if the car doesn’t break down. I am not convinced Aston would go much faster in Q2 or Q3, unlike the other teams either. Now if they can find seconds per lap, without the new Honda power unit, then perhaps they can move further up the grid closer to Audi. Seeing Alonso trundling around 3 laps down, is pretty depressing stuff here. Hopefully Honda has found at least 40 horsepower, better deployment, more powerful recharging, and new batteries to help the team.

For your sake, you really should temper your expectations.

I don’t know, I’ve seen rumours of a full 2 seconds’ worth of improvement from this upgrade - it’s SOOOO bad that you wonder if there’s some real low hanging fruit, and the weight alone is just free lap time.

Probably they need the engine upgrade as well but I wouldn’t be surprised if they join the midfield properly after that.