Aston Martin will join the 2026 pre-season running in Barcelona a little later than some of its rivals, with the team confirming it’s targeting track time on Thursday and Friday rather than the opening day of the test.
The Silverstone squad was among a small group that didn’t run on Monday, alongside McLaren and Ferrari, a choice that immediately turned the usual winter whisper mill up a notch. Williams, for its part, has already said it won’t attend the Barcelona test at all due to delays in its build programme — a reminder that with a big rules reset, simply getting a car ready and signed off is a competitive act in itself.
For Aston Martin, the timing matters because this is the first car shaped under Adrian Newey’s direction, and paddock imagination rarely needs much encouragement when a high-profile designer’s first new project is behind closed doors. The rumour set has been predictable: talk of an overweight chassis, talk of crash tests, talk of delays that may or may not be anything more than sensible scheduling.
What Aston Martin is pushing back on — quietly but clearly — is the idea that the AMR26 is stuck at the gate. The understanding from within the team is that the car has passed the relevant FIA tests, even if some parts in their latest form may still be going through the final homologation steps. That distinction is important in 2026, where the paperwork and processes around new-spec components can be just as unforgiving as the stopwatch once the running starts.
A team spokesperson confirmed the plan in straightforward terms: the AMR26 will be in Barcelona later this week for its shakedown, with the intention to run Thursday and Friday.
It’s worth noting what Aston Martin is actually buying with a delayed start. Every hour in the garage at this point is a trade-off between gathering real-world data and avoiding wasting track time while you’re still ticking off practical to-dos — build completion, part sign-off, and the last bits of administrative clearance that have a habit of becoming the difference between a productive day and a frustrating one. Showing up later isn’t automatically a red flag; showing up and being forced into low-mileage, stop-start running is.
Still, perception is part of the sport, and Aston Martin won’t be unaware of the optics. With Alonso and Stroll waiting for their first proper laps of the new era package, the early narrative is set whether the team likes it or not: the Newey car has to look sharp the moment it rolls out, because everything about this project invites judgement at first glance.
Barcelona, as ever, will provide only the loosest hints. A shakedown is not a performance statement and any headline laptime will be meaningless. What will matter is how cleanly the AMR26 runs through its programme, how quickly Aston Martin can begin chaining laps together, and whether the team emerges from the week talking about correlation and learning rather than “understanding” and “investigating”.
In a field where at least one team has already conceded it won’t make the test at all, simply turning up on Thursday and Friday and doing the work properly would be a solid start. But in Aston Martin’s case, “solid” is never going to be the whole story — not with this level of attention, and not with the expectations that follow Newey wherever he goes.
