Aston Martin’s first public steps into Formula 1’s new active-aero era have been… brief.
The AMR26 finally rolled out at Barcelona late on Thursday, Lance Stroll getting the honour of those first laps in what’s been one of the winter’s most watched debuts given Adrian Newey’s imprint on the project. Five laps later, the car was parked up on circuit in what was described as a precautionary stoppage after an apparent electrical issue showed itself via the car’s lights.
It was one of those moments that looks dramatic in photos — marshals around the stopped car, mechanics arriving in high-voltage gloves — but in context it sits firmly in “annoying interruption” rather than “early crisis”. New regulations, a new power unit partner, and an all-new car: the first time you send it beyond the garage door is exactly when you want gremlins to show themselves, even if you’d prefer it didn’t happen in front of everyone.
Aston Martin’s bigger issue is time. While several rivals have already banked mileage equivalent to multiple race distances across the three-day running at the Circuit de Catalunya, Aston Martin has effectively had a day and a bit — and that’s before you get into the detail that its quickest lap time this week tells you very little about its actual pace.
Fernando Alonso took over for the final day of the shakedown and logged 49 laps, the team unofficially totalling 54 across its limited running. His best of 1:20.795 left him 4.447s shy of the pace-setting Ferrari driven by Lewis Hamilton, but those around the circuit reported Alonso was operating under an imposed speed ceiling somewhere between 230 and 275km/h as Aston Martin worked through basic systems checks and continued familiarisation with its new Honda power unit.
In other words: this was Aston Martin in checklist mode, not performance mode. Which is sensible. But it also underlines why the team is understood to be staying on in Spain for an additional filming day — not for the optics, but because they need the laps.
F1’s rules allow two filming/shakedown days per season, capped at 200km each. At Barcelona’s 4.655km layout, that’s 42 laps to spend. For a team that has just lost a chunk of early pre-season mileage to an electrical hiccup and a late unveiling, 42 clean laps are suddenly not a marketing exercise but a small lifeline.
It’s also where the Newey factor cuts both ways. The AMR26 has been billed as one of the most anticipated cars of this new cycle, and paddock curiosity is inevitable when a designer of his influence puts the first Aston Martin of a new era on track. But the flip side is that a “Newey car” brings expectation that the basics will be immaculate from the first kilometre. When you stop after five laps and need the high-voltage gloves, it invites noise — even if the reality is that modern F1 cars are rolling electrical ecosystems and early niggles are part of the landscape.
Alonso, for his part, sounded like a driver who knows there’s no point chasing headlines in January — and also like someone who understands exactly what it means to start later than others.
“It was good, good,” Alonso said. “Definitely excited to be back in the car after the winter, and for us it’s the first day.
“I know some of the teams did filming days as shakedowns at the beginning of January and then the whole week here in Barcelona, but for us it was really the very first day.
“I think we had a positive one. Plus laps and the car is responding well. So first day and more to come.”
That’s the key line: “car is responding well”. When you’re running with speed limits and evaluating systems, what a driver is really reporting is coherence — does it brake straight, does it change direction predictably, does it do anything alarming when you lean on it a touch harder than you should on a shakedown? If those fundamentals are there, the lost mileage is frustrating but not fatal.
Still, Aston Martin can’t afford many more quiet days. Active aero has changed the game; teams are learning how to make these cars behave across modes, and how to balance performance with reliability when the car is constantly reconfiguring itself. Add a new engine package into that mix and you quickly understand why everyone is hoarding laps like they’re points.
The next 200km, if it happens as expected, won’t suddenly make Aston Martin “caught up” — but it will at least stop the winter from being defined by a five-lap debut and an early recovery truck. In a season where the margins will likely be set by how quickly teams converge on the right operating window, Aston Martin’s immediate job is simple: keep the AMR26 running, keep the data flowing, and give Newey’s first Aston Martin a fair shot to show what it really is once the speed limits come off.
