The real mistake Aston Martin made with Honda

Aston Martin has had a difficult start to its new technical partnership with Honda in F1 2026.

As Honda prepares for its home race in Japan this weekend, Newey’s recent comments revealed the real mistake Aston Martin made with its new engine partner…

Aston Martin badly underestimated the challenge facing Honda

A version of this article originally appeared in PlanetF1.com’s conclusions from the 2026 Australian Grand Prix

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What made Aston Martin swap its cushy supply of customer Mercedes engines and switch to Honda power for 2026?

That question cropped up a couple of times over the course of pre-season testing last month.

For a clue to the answer, see what’s currently going on at McLaren.

It has been said that McLaren’s success over recent years has totally debunked the long-held theory, pushed most famously by its former team principal Ron Dennis, that teams cannot win the world championship in the modern era without a works engine.

McLaren is living proof that a customer team can win and win well, especially when the works team gets as muddled as Mercedes did in the ground-effect era.

But is it a strategy conducive to sustained success over the long term?

On that score at least, Dennis’s doubts remain as valid as ever.

Go deeper: Why Aston Martin’s slow start to F1 2026 should come as no surprise

Can Adrian Newey save Aston Martin-Honda?

Aston Martin AMR26: What we’re hearing about Adrian Newey’s first Aston Martin

Look at McLaren now, back to feeling like a second-class citizen for the first time in years, its lack of integration and intrinsic knowledge of the new engine compared to the Mercedes factory team putting a clear limit on its ambitions at the start of 2026.

So, no, it was no mistake for Lawrence Stroll and Co. to assess the new rules and come to the conclusion that Aston Martin required its own engine if it was going to realise its full potential.

Yet where the team did go wrong, it became clear over the Australian Grand Prix weekend, was totally underestimating the challenge facing Honda ahead of 2026.

Despite its success with Red Bull until the end of last year, Honda has effectively returned to F1 this season following its official withdrawal at the end of 2021.

The period of inactivity between its decisions to withdraw and then re-enter with Aston Martin, announced in May 2023, saw Honda’s F1 project effectively gutted as key engineers departed and resources were diverted elsewhere.

It was an inescapable fact that the impact of Honda’s hokey cokey, tearing the whole thing down before building it all back up again 18 months later, would be felt in the development of its new engine for 2026.

Strange that Adrian Newey, a fiercely intelligent man and someone who has worked almost uninterrupted with Honda over the course of his Red Bull and Aston Martin stints, would in Melbourne claim to be taken by surprise by this news.

But still, appearing in the team principals’ press conference at Albert Park, Newey said the team only discovered the true impact of Honda’s reversal in November last year, with Aston Martin completely unaware of the situation when the deal was first agreed in 2023.

It was an admission to cut to the heart of one of the most common complaints of the Aston Martin era – the so-called ‘galacticos’ approach.

It is one thing, after all, to assemble such illustrious and respected names as Newey, Honda, Fernando Alonso and Andy Cowell (revealed by PlanetF1.com to be leaving Aston Martin in due course) to create an F1 superteam.

It is quite another to establish a culture and understanding to bring these elements together and get them working as a cohesive, effective and successful unit.

What first attracted you to Honda, Mr Stroll?

Probably nothing more than the fact that, at the time the deal was signed, it was dominating F1 in the back of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull.

Perhaps too much credence was given to the results, as though a Honda engine deal alone would magically come with a cast-iron guarantee of success, and not enough thought given to the process that helped put it in that position just a few years after its disastrous stint with McLaren ended.

What we see at Aston Martin now is simply the oversights and assumptions of the last three years coming back to bite.

The right people are all in place. But the strategy?

That bit has been sorely lacking.

Aston Martin and Honda targeting two-car finish at Japanese Grand Prix

Aston Martin and Honda is hopeful that the AMR26 will reach the chequered flag for the first time at the Japanese Grand Prix.

The car has been hamstrung by a severe engine vibration issue so far this season, with Fernando Alonso spotted taking his hands off the steering wheel during the recent Chinese Grand Prix in an attempt to reduce the physical strain on the straights.

Neither Alonso nor teammate Lance Stroll have completed a race so far this season.

Speaking ahead of this weekend’s race in Suzuka, however, Aston Martin chief trackside officer Mike Krack said a two-car finish is the target for Honda’s home race after recent steps forward.

He said: “We have worked together on different measures for mitigating both the hardware and also the driver’s side.

“So there are steps in place that obviously we need to test here and then see how we continue.”

“I think we made a small step in that direction in China, but it was not good enough, so the objective has to be to finish with both cars.”

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