2026 Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team

[FNTC]

Official statements on Friday:
"A positive start and a good platform"

De La Rosa:

"It's been a promising first day with the upgrade package, and the initial signs are encouraging despite losing valuable track time on Lance's car due to a suspension failure.

"The data we've gathered so far is broadly in line with our expectations, which gives us a solid foundation to build on overnight.

"It's only the first step, but it's a positive start and gives us a good platform to build on for the rest of the weekend."

Alonso:

"It felt better today and more or less what we expected with our new package. This correlation shows things are working properly and we can take positives from that.

"It's the first step for us and there are more to come over the next few races. We're trying to understand the new parts and there is more potential to unlock overnight in the car setup."

[mass_damper_enjoyer]

https://x.com/Nachez98/status/2080700851794878506

Alonso says vibrations were almost fixed at FP2.

[TyreSlip]

https://x.com/Nachez98/status/2080700851794878506

Alonso says vibrations were almost fixed at FP2.

That is strange because I read somewhere they were worse for FP2.

[AR3-GP]

I don't see that. I see tire marks from wheel spin on the outside tire that didn't break. Don't see anything from the inside tire. Anyways we'll find out the cause.

Well the other side was already broken. Wheel spin or not it was because the car was going sideways because of the breakage.

Newey said it was a part that they didn't update that broke.

New parts can introduce new loads and vibrations that cause "unchanged" parts to fail. It's a system.

[HondaPOD]

I'm not too concerned as the new PU will be here next week for the tyre test. Doubt the new PU will have the same vibrations as this one, they have had quite a lot of time to fix it.

The new PU will not be used during Perelli Tests; It's not allowed by the rules. But probably it will be tested during a filming Day (so limited to 200 km and restricted to special demonstration tires provided by Pirelli.)

[venkyhere]

they had been developing a macaroni rear wing

Oh no. Better be very, very al dente.

I don't think this joke gets the laughs it deserves.

[F1RAM]

Wrong

Maybe... I'd swear I was just looking at that through formula timer schematic in that exact moment... And when Alo was ending the outlap I was paying attention to follow his fast lap sectors .. then he went to boxes. Because of the red flag by Colapinto crash.

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm fairly confident of what I was seeing.

I can 100% assure you it was a fast lap.
It was his 3rd that I was watching live.
It's so stupid F1tv doesn't have live timing on the onbards.
He was definitely screwed by a blue car in the corner before last, either a Alpine or Williams.
This is why I asked about sector time, because he looked to have nailed that one.
Before I started to watch his onbards he did a 1.21.3 that was deleted for track limits and Spanish media says he lost time while off track.
He has the speed to get out of Q1 but just barely.
Still a long way from top

He was on his out lap on new softs just before the penultimate corner when Colapinto crashed... he boxed straightaway. All of his laps on softs came after the stoppage. You can go check on Gptempo the clock timings when laps were done. There was a 20min gap between his last medium lap to his first soft lap.

[Nikosar]

According to Otmar Szafnauer on High Performance, the team made a massive effort to bring upgrades for both cars. However, they are currently short on spare parts, so they are not pushing the cars. Much more to expect from this upgrade still early days;

[V10FURY]

It’s a bit too early to tell if the car has made a big enough step to get the team out of Q1. Lance having the rear suspension issue was certainly not ideal, but what a great job he did catching the spin, and not ending up in the wall. My question is why couldn’t they get him back out for FP2, which was over 2 hours later? When they showed his car it was in pieces, almost as if they had to build the old spec car for him. Not running two cars all day today was my concern when I mentioned the parts shortages a few pages ago. The team seems under prepared yet again, needing to break curfew just to get the cars built.

The vibrations being reported again are very concerning as obviously the team has shed a lot of weight, trying to get performance from the car. Has this weight reduction induced these bad vibrations again through the chassis? Will the new spec Honda engine have counter measures built in to help that for the next race. Can Honda extract the 50 + HP which Aston so desperately need to catch the mid field. I certainly hope so, and then we can really assess the start of the Newey car, with a somewhat competitive engine in the back of it.

As for the drivers market it looks like Alonso is either driving an Aston again next year, or perhaps leaving F1. If he does leave I think the obvious replacement could be Carlos Sainz, a multiple race winner, a good lead driver, with solid car development skills, and someone disgruntled with the promises that Williams sold him.

If Lance leaves (unlikely I know), pair him with Yuki Tsunoda, who would be a solid #2 driver, bring good sponsorship, and make Honda and Japanese fans happy. If Oscar Pisatri gets squeezed out at McLaren because Max takes his seat, he could be an outside chance here also, if Red Bull go to Ollie Bearman instead of him. Pisatri is not having a good season so far, and looks a bit out of sorts now compared to Lando.

My Qualifying prediction for tomorrow is Alonso P17, Stroll P18. I hope they aren’t any worse than that, and this would be a positive start to the new design development direction.

[GoranF1]

Maybe... I'd swear I was just looking at that through formula timer schematic in that exact moment... And when Alo was ending the outlap I was paying attention to follow his fast lap sectors .. then he went to boxes. Because of the red flag by Colapinto crash.

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm fairly confident of what I was seeing.

I can 100% assure you it was a fast lap.
It was his 3rd that I was watching live.
It's so stupid F1tv doesn't have live timing on the onbards.
He was definitely screwed by a blue car in the corner before last, either a Alpine or Williams.
This is why I asked about sector time, because he looked to have nailed that one.
Before I started to watch his onbards he did a 1.21.3 that was deleted for track limits and Spanish media says he lost time while off track.
He has the speed to get out of Q1 but just barely.
Still a long way from top

He was on his out lap on new softs just before the penultimate corner when Colapinto crashed... he boxed straightaway. All of his laps on softs came after the stoppage. You can go check on Gptempo the clock timings when laps were done. There was a 20min gap between his last medium lap to his first soft lap.

Colapinto crash is NOT what I am talking about at all...Colapinto crash was before, the car that screwed his lap started a fast lap.
I was watching it live and you were watching bulshit data online.

[ispano6]

The engine looks atrocious. The only hope we have is the new revision is much better than the current one.

The upgrades look quite good actually, big performance uplift and still there are gains to be made from setup, but the engine issue looks too big to overcome. Whatever aero work the team brings it will be quite useless if Honda does not improve.

And vibrations are back again...

You realize this is a fault of the chassis. Not the PU. The PU still has it's counter-measures.
It's quite useless to gather data for the team if one car can't run. Whatever PU upgrades Honda brings is useless if the car falls apart or the gearbox shudders to death.

[TyreSlip]

Without the aggression, what Goran was referencing was the third soft run qualifying attempt. Albon was driving slowly (maybe on race fuel) and Alonso caught him in sector 3 and had to abandon the lap because of Albon's dirty air.

[Sedaxel]

I can 100% assure you it was a fast lap.
It was his 3rd that I was watching live.
It's so stupid F1tv doesn't have live timing on the onbards.
He was definitely screwed by a blue car in the corner before last, either a Alpine or Williams.
This is why I asked about sector time, because he looked to have nailed that one.
Before I started to watch his onbards he did a 1.21.3 that was deleted for track limits and Spanish media says he lost time while off track.
He has the speed to get out of Q1 but just barely.
Still a long way from top

He was on his out lap on new softs just before the penultimate corner when Colapinto crashed... he boxed straightaway. All of his laps on softs came after the stoppage. You can go check on Gptempo the clock timings when laps were done. There was a 20min gap between his last medium lap to his first soft lap.

Colapinto crash is NOT what I am talking about at all...Colapinto crash was before, the car that screwed his lap started a fast lap.
I was watching it live and you were watching bulshit data online.

This clarifies things... What I saw is the Colapinto crash, screwing his fast lap with new softs. You were talking about other moment.

[dren]

Official statements on Friday:
"A positive start and a good platform"

De La Rosa:

"It's been a promising first day with the upgrade package, and the initial signs are encouraging despite losing valuable track time on Lance's car due to a suspension failure.

"The data we've gathered so far is broadly in line with our expectations, which gives us a solid foundation to build on overnight.

"It's only the first step, but it's a positive start and gives us a good platform to build on for the rest of the weekend."

Alonso:

"It felt better today and more or less what we expected with our new package. This correlation shows things are working properly and we can take positives from that.

"It's the first step for us and there are more to come over the next few races. We're trying to understand the new parts and there is more potential to unlock overnight in the car setup."

Finally...