Aston Martin’s pre-season preparations in Bahrain have taken on the air of a slow-motion collapse, with Honda-powered troubles leaving the Silverstone squad stranded in the garage while rivals rack up precious mileage.
What was supposed to be the final opportunity to improve the team’s AMR26 before Melbourne has instead turned into an exercise in damage limitation. After Fernando Alonso’s stoppage on Thursday afternoon – triggered by a power unit failure that cut short his race simulation – the team began Friday still on the back foot.
Lance Stroll did not venture out early in the session, and the team’s running was immediately curtailed. The issue? A battery problem embedded within Honda’s new hardware – the latest in a chain of reliability concerns that have plagued Aston Martin’s test programme.
Honda Restricts the Running
On Friday, Honda confirmed it was scrambling behind the scenes to understand the failure.
“We have been carrying out simulations on the test bench in HRC Sakura,” a statement from the Japanese manufacturer said. “Due to this and a shortage of power unit parts, we have adapted today's run plan to be very limited and consist only of short stints.”
Those words effectively sealed Aston Martin’s fate for the day. Limited parts. Limited mileage. Limited answers.
Team representative Pedro de la Rosa did little to sugarcoat the situation when speaking to F1TV.
"Yesterday we had some battery issues on Fernando's car, and therefore, Honda is carrying out test simulations in the test bench in Sakura,” explained the former F1 driver.
"Due to this fact, and also the fact that we have a shortage of parts, we will be doing very limited runs today.
“They will be short, and they will be separated by a minimum of half an hour, so that will allow us to really look into the data and be able to test some things in these few runs.
"But yeah, we won't be doing long runs today, for sure.”
‘Definitely we are not where we wanted to be’
For a team that entered 2026 with massive ambitions amid new regulations, a new Honda partnership, and a new gearbox and suspension, the reality has been bruising. Stroll has already suggested the AMR26 is “four seconds” off the pace, a sobering assessment that underlines the scale of the challenge.
De la Rosa admitted the situation plainly.
“Definitely we are not where we wanted to be,” de la Rosa conceded. “We have been the team with the least number of laps in pre-season testing. Obviously we would have preferred to do a lot more.
“But despite the fact we haven’t done a lot of laps, we have an enormous amount of data to look into and prepare ourselves for Australia.
“It’s a new set of regulations, everything is new. We have a new partner in Honda, new gearbox, new suspension.
“There’s so many things actually that we already have a good understanding on and we know the places and the areas of the cars we want to focus on.
“It’s not where we wanted to be, but the amount of laps we have done are showing us a direction for the future. So there’s a lot of work to be done still behind the scenes.”
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The underlying message is clear: progress will not come quickly. Asked whether Aston Martin faces a tough opening to the season, de la Rosa did not hesitate.
“Yeah of course it will be. When you start on the back foot it is always more difficult,” he said.
“But we have great partners, we have Honda. We have a fantastic campus and people working flat-out, trying to get us to the best possible compromise for Australia.”
For now, though, compromise feels a long way from competitiveness. As rivals prepare to attack the season opener in Melbourne, Aston Martin is still trying to get out of the garage.
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