Aston Martin staff are sleeping ‘three hours a night’ with 2026 F1 car at the back of the grid

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Aston Martin F1 staff are working extreme overtime in an attempt to address their current crisis, according to a report. There’s a risk that they will start the 2026 season at the back of the grid.

F1TV pundit Jolyon Palmer predicted the pecking order on the final day of testing and suggested that Aston Martin could even be behind newcomers Cadillac.

Aston Martin completed just 122 laps across the first two days of the test, 45 fewer than any other team. Lance Stroll caused a red flag on day one after an unusual spin, while Fernando Alonso’s stoppage brought Thursday’s session to a halt.

The car lacks pace in addition to reliability. While it’s difficult to determine the precise figure, the overall leaderboard suggests they are around three seconds off the top teams.

Aston Martin’s dismal 2026 start leads to late nights at the factory

As reported by AutoNocion, the car has three major weaknesses. Aston Martin have manufactured their own gearbox for the first time and it is malfunctioning, just like their Honda power unit.

On Friday morning, Honda released a statement confirming that their run plan would be ‘very limited’ after detecting ‘a battery-related issue’ in the previous session.

Aston Martin’s car is also overweight, though the positive spin is that this gives them a ‘huge amount of performance’ to unlock.

One team source told the publication that ‘fixing one of these issues will give us a significant performance boost quickly’. The Silverstone outfit expect to have the highest development rate of any team on the grid.

It’s said that some team staff are sleeping for just ‘three hours a night’ in between shifts at the factory. Reports suggest Lawrence Stroll has expressed his anger in the Bahrain paddock, and it seems as if the whole workforce is reacting.

Is Adrian Newey too powerful at Aston Martin?

Adrian Newey is running a Formula 1 team for the first time and faces arguably the toughest job in the pit lane right now.

Some Aston Martin staff are ‘disappointed’ in Newey’s first chassis. Initially praised for being so bold, it had to be immediately adjusted in Bahrain due to overheating.

The car also looks more difficult to drive than any other, but in Newey’s defence, he didn’t start working at the team until March last year, while rivals had their car in the wind tunnel from 1 January.

Still, Sky IT pundit Ivan Capelli is concerned that Newey will suffer without a strong leader like Christian Horner alongside him.

Capelli said: “He won’t have someone dictating the pace, giving him a perimeter: there will no longer be a Ron Dennis or Christian Horner, in this sense. This could pose a threat to Aston Martin and Newey.”