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Aston Martin has introduced a significantly revised AMR26 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, beginning a long-term effort to understand why the first car designed under Adrian Newey’s leadership became the least competitive machine on the grid while also suffering clear reliability problems.
The scale of the performance deficit was exposed at Spa. In Q1, Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll were separated from pole-sitter Kimi Antonelli by 3.698 seconds. By the time Antonelli set his Q3 pole lap, Alonso’s gap had stretched to 5.641 seconds. Those figures underlined how far the Silverstone-based team had fallen behind.
The Honda power unit has been identified as the least efficient, with major difficulties in managing its electrical charge. However, the problems were not confined to the engine. The AMR26’s packaging created additional complications, including vibrations generated by the battery itself. That issue was linked to an extreme design philosophy built around sacrificing every other element of the car in pursuit of maximum aerodynamic efficiency and the most effective vehicle dynamics.
The concept failed to deliver its intended objectives. As a result, the 2026 season has effectively become an extended test programme, with Aston Martin using each race to identify solutions that can be transferred to next year’s car. The team’s major Hungarian Grand Prix upgrade is therefore less about an immediate transformation than about creating a clearer baseline.
The revised sidepods, particularly the inlet section, and the extensively developed underbody represent a different approach to the AMR26’s power-unit packaging. One of the central objectives was to remove structural constraints embedded in the original design, constraints that further limited an already underperforming power unit.
In the first part of the season, the power unit, chassis and aerodynamics formed a chain of interdependent weaknesses. Each component influenced the others, making it difficult to isolate the source of the car’s poor performance. It was even harder to determine which design choices had potential and which had amplified Honda’s shortcomings.
Data gathered during the opening races has now provided the basis for a comeback strategy that is not expected to produce an overnight solution. The Budapest specification is the first major step in that process—and, crucially, is designed to make future progress measurable once Honda has used its allotted ADUOs.
He’s a software engineer with a deep passion for Formula 1 and motorsport. He co-founded Formula Live Pulse to make live telemetry and race insights accessible, visual, and easy to follow.