{"id":727898,"date":"2026-06-10T17:13:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/727898\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T17:13:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:13:13","slug":"aston-martin-claims-f1-chassis-is-fifth-fastest-at-some-tracks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/727898\/","title":{"rendered":"Aston Martin claims F1 chassis is \u201cfifth-fastest\u201d at some tracks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aston Martin Formula 1 team ambassador\u00a0Pedro de la Rosa<\/a> claims Aston Martin\u2019s 2026 chassis could be the \u201cfifth-fastest\u201d at its most favourable circuits.<\/p>\n

Aston has switched from customer Mercedes<\/a> engines to a works Honda deal for F1\u2019s new technical era, but the Japanese power unit\u2019s lack of power and reliability has hampered the outfit \u2013 despite recent progress on the latter and the ADUO mechanism providing opportunities to bounce back regarding the former.<\/p>\n

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So what is Adrian Newey\u2019s first-ever Aston chassis really worth? The legendary designer spoke out as early as February, explaining the squad\u2019s brand-new wind tunnel hadn\u2019t been up and running until April 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is that we didn\u2019t get a model of the ’26 car into the wind tunnel until mid-April, whereas most, if not all of our rivals would have had a model in the wind tunnel from the moment the 2026 aero testing ban ended at the beginning of January last year,\u201d Newey then stated. \u201cThat put us on the back foot by about four months, which has meant a very, very compressed research and design cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Aston Martin suffered four-month delay with 2026 F1 car design <\/a><\/p>\n

Hence Aston\u2019s current predicament and de la Rosa\u2019s latest assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think some circuits we could be fifth-fastest, some others we could be much further down,\u201d the Spaniard tentatively analysed. \u201cWhatever position we are in, it’s a position we’re not happy with.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just have to be patient, because we know that interesting things are coming. We just have to understand the regulations as well as we can, with the current limitations, so that when the new package arrives, we have more tools to extract everything from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Pedro de la Rosa, Aston Martin F1 Team\"Pedro<\/p>\n

Pedro de la Rosa, Aston Martin F1 Team<\/p>\n

Although it inherited one point following a myriad of time penalties at the Monaco Grand Prix, Aston arguably experienced its worst weekend so far, performance-wise, in the principality. It was outqualified by Cadillac for just the second time, amid crippling understeer on the narrow, winding layout.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were expecting to be a bit better here, but we found a very severe mid-corner understeer in the low-speed [corners], which the team has tried to cure, making all possible changes on set-up,\u201d de la Rosa explained. \u201cBut it is something more fundamental than the set-up change. We didn’t experience this understeer as bad as it has been here in any other race.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSo that has caught us out. The team has done a great job just changing up and down on set-up, everything you can think about mechanically and aerodynamically, but it hasn’t been enough. The car has remained very difficult, very difficult to really change the direction in the car, and also make it point in the right direction in the low-speed [corners]. That’s where we’ve been losing most of our time here in Monaco.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s where we are at the moment. What are we going to find in the next race? We don’t know, because it’s not something that we have felt this bad in the previous races.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing\"Fernando<\/p>\n

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing<\/p>\n

Asked if this understeer issue was unlikely to come up again given how unique the Monaco track\u2019s characteristics are, de la Rosa replied: \u201cIt’s difficult to say right now.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAs we haven’t seen [this] in circuits that are very different to Monaco, we remain confident that we should first of all analyse all the data that we have from this race, and if we find again this problem, then we’ll have more tools, actually, to work on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I would be surprised if we find this level of understeer, chronic mid-corner understeer, in any other track, because there\u2019s no track like Monaco.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd also this year, the soft tyre has been even pretty hard for this circuit, and a lot of teams \u2013 including us \u2013 have to work very hard the soft front tyres, really, to get them up to temperature. So, I would be surprised if we find these balance issues in the next few races.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Lance Stroll on Monaco F1 crash: \u2018The engine pushed me into the wall\u2019 <\/a><\/p>\n

To read more Motorsport.com articles visit our website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aston Martin Formula 1 team ambassador\u00a0Pedro de la Rosa claims Aston Martin\u2019s 2026 chassis could be the \u201cfifth-fastest\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":727899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[2676,585,49,48,262518,578,576,577,3786,82,170952],"class_list":["post-727898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-adrian-newey","tag-aston-martin","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-de-la-rosa","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-pedro-de-la-rosa","tag-sports","tag-wind-tunnel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/727899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}