Details of Aston Martin’s major upgrade for this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix have been published by the FIA, with a total of 16 submissions impacting almost every surface of the car.
The new package includes a lighter chassis as well as extensive aerodynamic upgrades, although the team will have to wait until the next round at Zandvoort -- after Formula 1’s summer break -- for its upgraded Honda power unit.
Asked to describe the upgrade on Thursday, chief trackside engineer Mike Krack called it: “A significant aerodynamic upgrade and a weight reduction.”
Rather than following the usual process of drip feeding new parts across the season, Aston Martin opted not to update its car at the opening 10 rounds of the season and deliver a major overhaul all at once in Hungary.
That approach has seen the team fall further and further off the pace at recent races, with F1 newcomers Cadillac outperforming Aston Martin in qualifying since the Monaco Grand Prix in early June.
At the last round in Belgium both Aston Martins were slowest of all, with Fernando Alonso’s qualifying lap over five seconds off the pace of Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes on pole position.
Teams have to submit a list of the aerodynamic upgrades they have brought to their cars ahead of each race weekend, and at the Hungaroring Aston Martin’s submissions extended to two pages.
The following components were listed:
- Front wing- Front wing endplate- Nose- Front corner- Floor body- Floor fences- Floor edge- Diffuser- Sidepod inlet- Engine cover- Cooling louvres- Rear suspension- Rear corner- Rear wing- Beam wing- Rear wing endplate
Speaking on Thursday, Alonso said he was “optimistic” about the upgrade and outlined the difference in Aston Martin’s approach compared to its rivals.
“I think for the first 10 races, all the other teams opted for a different strategy, the more conventional one, to bring two or three tenths of a second every two or three races, and then you end up with one second or one and a half seconds by race 10 or race 12,” he said.
“We didn’t do that, so we fell a little bit behind everyone else on the grid, and now we will try to catch up all at once.
“I’m obviously optimistic. I’m very proud of the team and of the job that they’ve done since the Bahrain preseason test, when we understood that we had a problem and we had to fix a few weaknesses on the car.
“I think this is the first step towards those fixes, but there are more to come.”
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Expectations were high for Aston Martin’s 2026 car after legendary designer Adrian Newey joined from Red Bull as a co-owner and technical leader in March 2025.
Aston Martin’s design office held off on making key decisions about its 2026 car until Newey arrived, which put it over three months behind its rivals when it started development of the AMR26 in earnest.
The car then arrived late at the opening preseason test in Barcelona, only for vibrations from its Honda engine to severely limit its track time across all three preseason tests and into the opening races.
At the first round in Australia, Alonso was 2.462 seconds off the pace at the front of the grid and both cars were unable to finish the race due to the vibration issue damaging the power unit’s battery.
Countermeasures were introduced to combat the vibrations, but in doing so added weight to an already heavy car.
The Honda engine also proved to be down on performance compared to rival engine manufacturers after the Japanese company faced its own issues and delays with the development of its V6 turbo and hybrid system for the new regulations.
On Thursday, Krack said it would take multiple races for the team to extract the full performance from its latest upgrades and played down expectations of a significant step this weekend.
However, he made clear that the objective was to put Aston Martin back in a competitive position in F1 as soon as possible.
“The reason why we do this is to go racing and we have not been racing over the last events,” Krack said. “And this is what we need to return to.
“So now where we race in that big competitive field, we will see. This I can really not predict.
“But the key question is that we are back in the game because we were not before.”
