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Martin Brundle says Aston Martin and Honda are facing a ‘snowball effect’ after what he called a ‘dire’ pre-season for the new partnership.
Lance Stroll completed just six laps on the final day of pre-season testing in Bahrain as Honda were forced to impose mileage restrictions due to a shortage of batteries.
Aston Martin, who arrived late to the Barcelona Shakedown in late January, completed 400 laps across eight days of testing. That’s an average of just 50 per day, by far the lowest on the grid.
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This raises serious reliability concerns heading to the Australian Grand Prix, but the car also lacks performance when it is running. Indeed, there are fears that Adrian Newey’s team could be the slowest in F1 at the start of the year, even behind newcomers Cadillac.
Martin Brundle warns of ‘snowball effect’ at Aston Martin
Sky Sports pundit Brundle was asked about the crisis on the F1 Show. Newey boasted about Aston having the best wind tunnel in F1, but it appears the correlation with the real-world is ‘miles out’.
Honda initially planned to leave F1 before the 2026 season before changing their minds, and that interruption has clearly hurt them.
As Newey acknowledged in a private meeting, Honda’s power unit can’t recover 250kW of energy, let alone the 350kW that other teams are achieving.
After a string of failures in the winter, Brundle says Honda must be wary of the engine manufacturers’ cost cap. With so little data gathered, he doesn’t foresee a quick solution.
Finish the sentence: In 2027, the Aston Martin driver line-up will be…
“As you said, new everything,” Brundle told Simon Lazenby. “It’s clear to me that the correlation between the wind tunnel, the CFD and the stopwatch on the race track looks like it’s miles out. The car didn’t exactly look stuck to the road when it was running.
“Honda were pulling out, they came back in, they seemed a long way behind on battery recovery and reliability. They’re churning through their cost cap on the motor side already.
“The big problem they have is that there are four teams charging round with the Mercedes power unit. Can you imagine, after nine days of testing, how much data Mercedes have?
“Ferrari have three teams. Audi have done well, but they’ve only got themselves. Honda have only got Aston Martin. If the Aston Martin isn’t going round the track, which it wasn’t by and large, they’ve got no data. It’s a snowball effect for them, and they’re in dire trouble at Aston Martin.
“I’m sure they’ve got the resource and the brainpower to do something about that, but it’s going to take time.”
The wild rumours about Aston Martin circulating in the F1 paddock
There are suggestions that Lawrence Stroll could lose interest in F1 if his multi-million dollar recruitment drive fails. It’s too early to give up, of course, but already the timeline for success has shifted from 2026 towards 2027 and more likely 2028.
Aston Martin already have a title sponsorship deal with Saudi national oil company Aramco, and a full takeover by the Gulf state isn’t out of the question in the coming years.
One man who can’t necessarily afford to be patient is Fernando Alonso, who will turn 45 this year.
Conversations are taking place within the F1 paddock about Alonso returning to Alpine, though this is purely speculative for now. That would be a desperation move for the Spaniard, particularly given that Alpine are only a midfield team themselves, but one could forgive him for panicking at this stage.
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