Team principal credits improved working relationship with Honda for a car that is finally moving forward, with a revised power unit due at Zandvoort later this month
Adrian Newey has a theory: a bad enough start can bring two companies closer together than a good one ever would. He’s testing it on Aston Martin and Honda.
UK odds tracked across the best betting sites still list Aston Martin as a long shot in the outright constructors’ market. That’s not surprising given the season the team has had.
The switch to a Honda works power unit for 2026 went wrong almost immediately. The RA626H had reliability problems and a vibration issue bad enough that there were fears at the time it could cause nerve damage to Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll. Neither driver finished any of the first three rounds.
Newey brought this up unprompted in the FIA team principals’ press conference at the Hungarian Grand Prix. Asked about Honda’s progress, he pointed to the crisis itself: “Out of what can only be called a disastrous start, the positive of that — because you’re always looking for positives — is that it’s brought Honda and ourselves, AMR, into a very close working relationship. We continue to develop that in all areas. Normally, if relationships improve, then performance also improves.”
He wasn’t claiming Aston Martin had caught up. Far from it: “We’re clearly playing a big catch-up game. Is it going to make us the quickest car? Unfortunately, not. But does it represent a good step forward from where we were? Yes, I believe it does.”
A weekend of small gains in Hungary
The Hungaroring upgrade covered the front wing, floor, diffuser and rear suspension. It was Aston Martin’s biggest single package of the season, and it showed. Alonso reached Q2 for the first time all year, qualifying 16th, and finished 14th. Stroll finished 13th.
Neither result gets near the points. For a team that spent the first half of 2026 running at the back, though, it was progress you could actually point to.
Lando Norris won that weekend — McLaren’s first victory of the year — ahead of Max Verstappen and Kimi Antonelli. Norris also snapped Mercedes’ run of ten straight poles, beating Lewis Hamilton by 0.012 seconds in qualifying. Antonelli takes the championship lead into the summer break on 219 points. Hamilton sits on 169, Russell on 160. Mercedes leads the constructors’ standings on 379 to Ferrari’s 307.
Honda’s next step comes at Zandvoort
Newey’s talk of a stronger relationship comes with a deadline attached. Under the FIA’s Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities scheme, Honda is bringing an upgraded power unit to the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort on 21 to 23 August. More chassis updates are planned for Monza and Baku. Honda’s trackside general manager, Shintaro Orihara, confirmed the timing ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix: “We have two more races before we introduce the new engine.”
Nobody will say exactly how much power it’s worth. Estimates run from around 30 horsepower to as high as 50, a number Orihara has already batted down in public. Aston Martin and Honda aren’t putting a figure on it themselves. After a season that started with promises the car couldn’t keep, that silence looks deliberate.
The people running Honda’s side of things are telling the same story as Newey. Koji Watanabe, president of Honda Racing Corporation, put it plainly: “Our partnership with Aston Martin is getting better and better.” Aston Martin’s chief trackside officer, Mike Krack, described how the two sides handled the low point together: “It’s easy to point the finger, but we sat together, and we said, ‘We are in this together. We need to work hard to get out of it together.'”
Aston Martin built 2026 around Honda’s return to the sport and its own championship ambitions. Neither has shown up yet. What’s arrived instead is a car that’s a bit better than it was in March, and a partnership that, by every account from inside it, is stronger than it looked from the outside. Zandvoort will start to show whether that actually means anything on the stopwatch.
