Aston Martin and Honda have had nothing short of a disastrous start to 2026 with a Formula 1 pre-season beset by persistent technical problems.
The new partnership has started in a manner worryingly similar to Honda’s last F1 nightmare with McLaren in 2017, the last season of that failed three-year union.
Honda’s engine is down on power and efficiency and is also encountering various problems across the internal combustion engine and battery.
As with 2017 its engine has managed the lowest mileage count by a long way and its works team is lagging well behind rivals.
Update: Aston Martin’s final day of F1 testing over after six laps
The problem is a negative spiral for Honda that Aston Martin’s been trapped in across this test, but began in Spain.
Aston Martin’s car was finished late and it only completed its first shakedown laps at the end of the penultimate day of that test, then had restricted running on the final day.
As reliability problems have continued, and fresh ones emerged, in Bahrain the car has spent significant amounts of time in the garage not logging vital laps.
This kicks off a hugely problematic cycle: Honda suffers a problem, which costs mileage and vital learning, so they cannot make enough progress and when the car goes back out, another problem is suffered. Then it repeats.
The upshot is just over 240km per day completed on average across eight-and-a-half days of possible testing.
This is at least better than Honda’s abysmal, delayed start to the V6 turbo-hybrid era the first time around in 2015 when it was limited to 145.75km per day on average.
But it is almost identical to 2017, when Honda averaged 247.5km per day and the poor reliability and performance of that year’s engine led to McLaren ending the partnership.
To put it in a 2026 context, a Mercedes-engined car manages just over 600km a day on average based on the 8.5 days of testing so far while Ferrari almost hits 600km per day as well and Red Bull (570km) and Audi (540km) are in a similar ballpark.
This will look even worse by the end of Friday. A troubled test programme is reaching a limp conclusion in Bahrain, where Honda has had to drastically limit the team’s mileage on the final day after an engine problem that occurred on Thursday.
Aston Martin only completed two installation laps at the end of the first four-hour session on day three, after Honda conducted analysis and test bench work at its Sakura R&D facility in Japan to establish what kind of run plan might be feasible.
This is due to a shortage of engine parts – with one suggestion even being that Honda is down to its last battery on-site – that means Honda has to be very careful to avoid a final, terminal problem.
Very limited runs of short stints with at least half an hour downtime between those runs are expected in the second half of the day.
It is badly holding back the team and engine side. There is so much to learn with the new car and engine rules that this much missing mileage puts a huge limitation on tapping into whatever potential is in the package.
There is reduced opportunity to understand the car – which is an aggressive Adrian Newey-led design – but even more importantly at the moment to work out the most effective energy management strategies.
Teams have found significant performance in optimising their battery charging and deployment around the lap with the new engines and increased capacity MGU-K, with one manufacturer thinking it is worth around half a second minimum compared to where they started in Barcelona.
Aston Martin, Honda and the two drivers are therefore lagging well behind others in understanding what techniques and mapping are required – let alone where Honda’s weaknesses in these areas truly lie and to what extent.
Part of the reason this has happened is this is not the same Honda technical operation that recovered from such a miserable three years with McLaren and grew into a title-winning force with Red Bull until recently.
Its (aborted) withdrawal from F1 meant around 18 months of downtime from the end of 2021 to the spring of 2023 when the Aston Martin deal was announced, as a relative skeleton team kept up to date with F1’s 2026 rules but there was nothing like the active development other manufacturers had undertaken in this period.
That delay, and the wholesale changes within Honda’s F1 division as a result of its initial withdrawal, means it has started almost from scratch in these rules in an operational sense, not just a technical one.
A terrible testing period is the consequence. The immediate priority is to establish a baseline level of reliability to complete laps and simply target finishing the season opener in Australia.
Only then can Honda and Aston Martin really know how much of a problem they will carry into the season, and what kind of recovery is possible in the short-term.
