{"id":475943,"date":"2026-02-12T22:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T22:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/475943\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T22:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T22:02:09","slug":"aston-martin-four-seconds-off-after-tough-start-to-f1-pre-season-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/475943\/","title":{"rendered":"Aston Martin “four seconds off” after tough start to F1 pre-season testing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lance Stroll<\/a> was extremely downbeat after Aston Martin\u2019s tough start to pre-season testing for the 2026 Formula 1 campaign – claiming \u201cwe\u2019re four seconds off\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Silverstone-based outfit was four days late to the first collective shakedown of the year in Barcelona before Stroll completed just 36 laps on day one of this week\u2019s Bahrain test – only Franco Colapinto<\/a> had fewer.<\/p>\n

That was the result of Aston Martin detecting \u201ca data anomaly\u201d from the new Honda power unit, thus forcing Stroll out for much of the action, which saw Max Verstappen<\/a> complete the most laps with 136.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, we look like we’re four seconds off the top team, four and a half seconds,\u201d said Stroll. \u201cImpossible to know what fuel loads and everything people are running. But, yeah, now we need to try and find four seconds of performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old said that after setting a best time of 1m39.883s, which was 5.214s off pacesetter Lando Norris<\/a> but as Stroll pointed out, there are the usual caveats that come with testing.<\/p>\n

Even so, it hasn\u2019t been the start Aston Martin hoped for given the huge expectations it had coming into this year\u2019s regulation change with a new engine and Adrian Newey as team boss.<\/p>\n

\"Lance <\/p>\n

Lance Stroll, Aston Martin Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Alastair Staley \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

That accompanies all the investment billionaire owner Lawrence Stroll has put into the team, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily translate into a fast car, particularly one which started its wind tunnel programme four months late – per Newey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have all the tools to fight for race wins and championships,\u201d added Stroll. \u201cWe’re not doing that at the moment and we have to think about what we can do about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo we want to fight for race wins? Yes. Are we fighting for race wins today? It doesn’t look like it. Does that mean we can fight for race wins in the future? No, I believe we can.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I don’t have a crystal ball, I didn’t have a crystal ball before the season started, and we are where we are here today. It doesn’t look like it’s amazing. Can that change in the next few weeks? Can it get a lot better? For sure. Will it 100% get way better? I don’t know. I don’t have the answers to those questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I can say is we’re pushing as hard as we can. We’re focused on bringing performance to the car, to the engine every single second of every single day and time will tell how competitive we look at the first race and throughout the whole season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stroll then claimed the problems are \u201ca combination of things\u201d pinpointing the \u201cengine, balance, grip\u201d before offering a very short answer when asked about positives: \u201cThe livery looks nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lance Stroll was extremely downbeat after Aston Martin\u2019s tough start to pre-season testing for the 2026 Formula 1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[8541,64,63,239802,240338,813,10310,806,805,803,804,85,242415],"class_list":{"0":"post-475943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-aston-martin-racing","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-bahrain-international-circuit","12":"tag-bahrain-pre-season-testing","13":"tag-formula-1","14":"tag-lance-stroll","15":"tag-motor","16":"tag-motor-sports","17":"tag-motosport","18":"tag-motosports","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-stroll-aston-martin-four-seconds-off-after-tough-start-to-f1-pre-season-testing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}