Aston Martin’s first proper public outing of 2026 came with a bit of theatre.
When the AMR26 rolled out in Barcelona it did so under an all-black wrap — the sort of temporary disguise teams lean on when they’d rather the paddock squints at shapes and details than gets distracted by paint. Now the covers are off, and the car is back in unmistakable Aston Martin satin green, the message is clear enough: this isn’t just a livery reveal, it’s a statement of intent at the start of a new chapter.
Because the AMR26 isn’t simply “next year’s Aston”. It’s the first Formula 1 car produced under the watch of Adrian Newey at Silverstone, and in a season where wording matters, that alone changes the temperature around the project. Newey’s presence always does. Engineers from rival teams don’t need a press release to tell them when his fingerprints might be on a concept — they start zooming in on the photos and asking which problems he’s trying to solve this time.
Some of the attention has already clustered around the suspension, with the AMR26’s approach being treated as one of the early technical talking points of the winter. That’s predictable, really. When Newey is involved, the industry assumes there’s a reason for every visible decision — and a second reason hidden in the bits you can’t easily see. Whether the car proves quick is a separate question, but intrigue is part of the package.
There’s also a bigger, structural shift underpinning all of this. Aston Martin begins 2026 as a works team, starting a new partnership with Honda as the sport moves into its latest engine era. Honda’s appetite to stay in F1 was sharpened by the new regulations, and Aston has managed to position itself as the manufacturer’s chosen route back to the front. That’s not a small deal in a championship that still tends to reward the teams able to knit chassis and power unit into a coherent whole, rather than simply bolt the two together and hope for the best.
It’s hard not to view this season as a junction point for Aston Martin: the Newey factor on the car side, and Honda on the power side. Both come with expectation attached — sometimes unfairly so, given that regulation resets can punish even the best-run organisations if they misread a development path early.
But that’s also why this car has carried so much interest since it first appeared at the Barcelona shakedown. Aston Martin didn’t show it immediately; it only emerged late on Day 4. That delay will mean Bahrain testing carries extra weight, not just in the usual “first real mileage” sense, but in the practical need to put proper kilometres on the package and start building a baseline. With the test split across two blocks — 11-13 February and 18-20 February — the team will want to spend less time chasing gremlins and more time learning what it’s actually got.
Bahrain should also be the moment where the conversation shifts from winter fascination to something a little more concrete. It’s one thing to spot an “innovation” in a photo and quite another to understand whether it’s a performance tool, a set-up headache, or simply an elegant solution to a problem everyone else has tackled differently. For Aston Martin and Honda, those first days matter because the partnership is new, and the clock always runs faster when you’re integrating big moving parts at once.
Newey, of course, is the headline name, and not without reason. His designs have been part of 26 world championship wins, and he’s already reached the top with Williams, McLaren and Red Bull. The lure, now, is obvious: can he add a fourth title-winning team to that list? It’s the kind of subplot the paddock can’t resist, and it gives Aston Martin something it has sometimes lacked during its rise — an aura that forces rivals to take it seriously before the lap times have done the talking.
All of which makes the green paint more than just aesthetics. Aston Martin could have kept the AMR26 in stealth mode a bit longer if secrecy was the only aim. Choosing to reveal the true colours now feels like a marker laid down ahead of testing: this is the car, this is the identity, and this is the project we’re putting at the centre of the new era.
The next step is the one that really counts. Once the AMR26 is out in Bahrain alongside the rest of the field, the microscope will only get sharper — and it won’t be looking at the colour. It’ll be looking at whether all the clever ideas add up to a car that can be tuned, trusted and pushed, from the first long runs of February to the business end of the season.
