The British team introduces its long awaited chassis update at the Hungaroring, with a significant weight reduction and aerodynamic improvements. Honda will debut its engine evolution at Zandvoort.
Aston Martin faces the Hungarian Grand Prix with the hope that its long awaited chassis upgrade package will allow them to get off the bottom of the grid. The British team has had a forgettable start to the season, with just one point in the constructors' championship and a deficit of more than four seconds per lap to the leaders. Adrian Newey, the team's chief designer, has acknowledged that the team was delayed in developing the 2026 car and has had to work with outdated tools.
"Extremely challenging, both on the chassis side and the power unit side, we have been playing catch up from the beginning. In hindsight we probably set our expectations too high. We didn't start working seriously on the 2026 car until mid March 2025 and we didn't get a model in the wind tunnel until mid April, that left us several months behind our rivals and that's a big gap to close" summarized Newey on the season so far.
Newey also pointed out that Aston Martin relied on "tools and processes that had been patched and patched for years" some of which date back to the early days of the Jordan team: "We have used this difficult period as an opportunity to renew our way of working" he emphasized.
The upgrade package debuting in Hungary includes a significant weight reduction with the aim of getting closer to the minimum regulatory limit and substantial aerodynamic improvements: "The main structural elements remain the same but we have removed weight from both, which has required re homologating and crash testing the chassis. The front suspension does not change, the rear is slightly revised, we have developed a new nose and substantially revised aerodynamic surfaces" explained Newey.
The British designer was cautious about expectations: "It's not a competition of how beautiful it is, but of how fast it goes. We predict a big step but I don't want to give concrete figures, we'll have to see when the car hits the track" he stated.
Mike Krack, trackside operations director, highlighted the main goal of the upgrades: "For us, the most important thing is that we get back to racing because we haven't done that in the last few races, it was very difficult to keep up with the midfield. Whatever it brings, I think getting back to racing is the most important thing for everyone" declared Krack.
Honda will debut its engine evolution at the Dutch Grand Prix, at the end of August. Shintaro Orihara, Honda's chief engineer, highlighted the improvement in the relationship with Aston Martin: "We had a difficult time in the winter tests, but I would say we built our relationship through the difficult time and built the foundations to work together. Every difficult moment, we can learn from that" he stated.
Jak Crawford, Aston Martin's reserve driver, has been working on the simulator with the new upgrades: "I'm taking a lot of good information from Fernando, from Lance, from the engineers. When I run on the simulator they trust what I say and what I do, my feedback goes to everyone in the factory" he explained.
