Aston Martin arrived in Bahrain knowing this winter was never going to be a gentle one. A new technical era, a new power unit partner, and a car that’s effectively the first proper expression of Adrian Newey’s influence at Silverstone is a lot of change to stack into one pre-season.
What it didn’t expect, though, was for the opening weeks of the Aston Martin-Honda alliance to feel quite so unfinished — short on mileage, short on confidence, and, in Lance Stroll’s words, plainly short on power.
“We need more power. It’s as simple as that,” Stroll said after the final day of running in Bahrain. “I think we’re lacking on power. And then we also need to improve the car. So, a combination of things.”
That blunt assessment landed after a test that unravelled at the worst possible moment. Aston Martin managed fewer than 400 laps across the six days in Bahrain, and Stroll’s final day amounted to just six tours of the circuit. Battery issues that had shown up the day before returned, and the situation was compounded by a shortage of spare Honda engine parts — a cocktail that forced the team into brief, cautious bursts rather than the long runs that actually teach you something useful.
The timing is awkward. Free practice for the season opener in Melbourne begins on March 6, and there’s only so much you can “learn” when you can’t keep the car on track for more than a handful of laps at a time. It also means the team’s early-season to-do list isn’t the tidy, familiar “bring a new floor and a couple of setup ideas” kind. It’s foundational: make the system reliable, unlock the hybrid deployment properly, and then start judging the chassis with clean data.
Stroll didn’t dress it up as a quick fix.
Asked whether the problems felt like short-term growing pains or something more deeply rooted, he pointed straight at the car. “Car for sure,” he said. “We have a lot of ideas. Will all of our problems be fixed for Melbourne? Probably not.
“But it’s a long season, 24 races. So, we keep chipping away. We try and bring as much performance as we can every weekend. And then on the engine side, the same, just try and bring as much performance as we can throughout the year, and we’ll see how we go.”
That’s the key nuance in Aston Martin’s situation: there are two separate battles being fought at once. One is the new Honda package delivering what it’s supposed to deliver — not just peak output, but usable energy deployment and consistency across runs. The other is the AMR26 itself, which will be scrutinised harder than any Aston Martin in recent memory because it’s the first designed under Newey’s watch.
The paddock expectation for Newey doesn’t need explaining, but it does need tempering. Even the best designers don’t turn a car around with a single sketch, and 2026’s regulation reset means there are more unknowns than usual. Still, the fact Aston Martin is already talking about “ideas” rather than pretending everything is fine tells you this hasn’t been a smooth opening chapter.
Stroll, for his part, made it clear that Newey’s presence is already shaping how the team is thinking about the recovery rather than simply providing reassurance for the outside world.
“It’s been really nice spending time with Adrian, talking about the car, the things we need to work on, improve going forward,” Stroll said. “We’re still learning the car, working on many things and just trying to find more performance.”
That line — “still learning the car” — is doing heavy lifting. In a normal winter, teams talk about understanding a new aero platform, correlation, tyre behaviour. Aston Martin, right now, is trying to get to the point where those conversations are even meaningful. Limited mileage doesn’t just slow development; it blurs cause and effect. You can’t separate a balance problem from a deployment issue if you can’t run the same programme twice.
And yet, there’s a realism in the way Stroll framed it. Aston Martin won’t turn up in Australia with every weakness cured. It might not even arrive with a complete read on how far off the pace it truly is. But the team is betting on volume: 24 races, constant upgrades, and a Honda programme that should improve as the season gathers momentum.
It’s a patient message, but it also carries a warning. In a year where everyone’s learning, the teams that rack up early mileage tend to find solutions sooner — and bank points while others are still firefighting. Aston Martin’s immediate objective in Melbourne may be less about headlines and more about simply getting its new car-and-engine relationship into a stable rhythm.
Because until the AMR26 is doing proper runs — not six-lap cameos — all the “ideas” in the world are just that. Ideas.
