Racing
© Jonathan Borba
Aston Martin is targeting the Hungarian Grand Prix for a major reset of its 2026 season, with a deeply revised AMR26B and Honda’s summer power-unit step forming the core of a recovery plan after a start that has yielded only one point and left the team about four seconds per lap off the leaders.
According to Motorsport Italia, the Hungary package is not a conventional update cycle but a near B-spec redesign of the AMR26 overseen by Adrian Newey. Reports say only the current car’s front suspension is expected to carry over, with the rest of the package heavily reworked as Aston Martin tries to get back into regular points contention in the second half of the year.
That scale reflects the size of the problem. Shintaro Orihara, Honda F1’s track engineering chief, described the project’s start as a "total fiasco" and said Honda’s V6 is "behind," but he made clear the power unit is not the only issue. He said the AMR26’s chassis and aerodynamics are also responsible for a "colossal delay of about 4 seconds per lap" compared with the front-runners, pointing to Monaco and Spain as proof that the weakness runs across the whole package.
Honda’s side of the recovery is tied to the FIA’s ADUO system, with the manufacturer working toward a new-spec engine over the summer. Orihara said engine performance "will not change much" before that point, which leaves Honda looking for gains in areas such as simulation, energy-management optimization and car-data setup while Aston Martin waits for the bigger hardware step.
Koji Watanabe, president of Honda Racing, also warned against expecting an instant turnaround. "It will not dramatically change the situation overnight. So our approach is unchanged and we will continue to work with a long-term perspective," he said on Formula 1’s website in comments cited by Lawrence Barretto.
The slow start has roots beyond outright pace. Honda says it lost time after its previous Formula 1 withdrawal and then had to rebuild its development structure after returning for the Aston Martin works project. Watanabe said budget-cap restrictions also forced HRC to spend valuable early resources on reliability and vibration problems before it could focus properly on performance.
Even with the results worsening pressure, both sides insist the partnership itself has held together. Orihara said Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack has been central to that. "I would say that even though we had difficult moments during winter testing, our relationship remained good, or open, thanks to Mike Krack’s personality," Orihara said in a statement. He added that there had been many meetings between the Aston Martin and Honda factories to improve reliability, and said the relationship had been improving step by step.
Watanabe has struck a similar line at management level, saying he communicates often with owner Lawrence Stroll and that both remain aligned on the need to recover across the power unit, chassis and team operation.
That is why Hungary matters so much. Aston Martin’s almost all-new AMR26B and Honda’s ADUO-enabled engine progress are being treated as the project’s first real chance to escape the back-row fight and build toward regular points finishes in the second half of the championship.