Aston Martin’s nightmare start to F1 2026 has continued on the final day of pre-season testing in Bahrain.
The Silverstone-based team did not emerge until just before lunch on the third and final day of the second Bahrain test following Fernando Alonso’s stoppage on Thursday afternoon.
Alonso broke down due to a Honda power unit problem which cut short his race simulation and curtailed Aston Martin’s running.
Lance Stroll completed just six laps before Aston Martin confirmed it has “completed our programme for today” less than two hours into the afternoon.
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Honda confirmed it is investigating a battery issue with its new power unit.
“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.”
It marks the latest setback for Aston Martin in a pre-season that has been plagued by poor reliability and performance issues, with Stroll bleakly claiming the AMR26 is “four seconds” off the pace.
Explaining Aston Martin’s situation, team representative Pedro de la Rosa told 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.
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“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.”
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De la Rosa admitted Aston Martin are on the back foot as a result of its pre-season woes.
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“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.
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“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.”
Asked if Aston Martin faces a tough start to the new season, de la Rosa replied: “Yeah of course it will be. When you start on the back foot it is always more difficult.
“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.”
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