Aston Martin warns early AMR26 issues ‘won’t be an overnight fix’

Aston Martin ambassador Pedro de la Rosa has admitted “we are catching up” after a delayed start to pre-season, and that the team has already identified issues which are being addressed on the AMR26.

Aston Martin ran several laps on the fourth day of shakedown running in Barcelona before a fuller day afterwards, and while the team clocked a respectable 206-lap tally over three days in Bahrain this week, it was the lowest combined total of any team in that test.

De la Rosa: Early Aston Martin issues ‘won’t be an overnight fix’

Want more PlanetF1.com coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for news you can trust.

The Silverstone-based team brought the AMR26 to Barcelona in January towards the end of shakedown running, but was able to gain a fuller understanding of its new machine with three days in Bahrain earlier in the week.

Lance Stroll warned the team had up to four seconds’ worth of performance to find, while Fernando Alonso admitted it was “difficult to know” where Aston Martin sits in the current pecking order in Formula 1.

Team ambassador De la Rosa, who himself amassed more than 100 race starts in Formula 1 alongside extensive test driver duties in his career, explained Aston Martin has already spotted fixes to undertake on its highly-anticipated new machine, with Adrian Newey having taken up lead design duties last spring.

Early fixes are not unusual in Formula 1, even more so in a year of mass regulation changes, but with the lowest mileage logged across both shakedown and official running, the Spaniard admitted the team is in the process of playing catch-up.

“We are on this steep learning curve,” De la Rosa told PlanetF1.com and other assembled media in Bahrain on the final day of the first week of testing.

“We are catching up. We are learning and we are basically in the part of the process where you are starting to learn about your package and about the new rules. Really, that’s where we are.

More on F1 2026 regulations

Safety concerns trigger calls for urgent change to F1 2026 race starts

Opinion: Formula 1 is undermining innovation with 2026 engine politics

“Clearly, we’re behind other people, and that’s clear – but that doesn’t mean that we are [not] achieving now a more decent amount of laps, kilometres. We’re learning. We’re optimising.

“We are not in a stage where we are changing the setup to learn, to see what the car has, optimising the setup. We are just keeping the car as it is and just trying to achieve as many laps as possible, doing aero mapping, learning about deployment, about harvesting and all the usual stuff. Basically, nothing new, but a bit behind our programme.”

De la Rosa referenced Stroll’s comments on how far behind the team may sit at this stage, though Alonso believed the four seconds he quoted may well have been in reference to the gap the team had behind the fastest time of testing, rather than a true performance deficit.

Work is already underway at the team’s Silverstone base to work on early issues encountered with the AMR26, and the former Formula 1 driver emphasised that, rather than one specific area of the car underperforming for now, it is over the whole package.

That being said, he has full faith in those working behind the scenes to turn around this early disadvantage – not least because of the resources now available with Aston Martin.

“I mean, we are clearly behind,” he added. “As Lance said, I mean, we are four, three or five [seconds behind]. I mean, it’s not what is most important really now.

“The thing is, we have to unlock performance, yes. Everyone is in the same boat, but we are clearly behind. And when you are losing or you’re missing that amount of time, it’s clearly over the overall package. We cannot say it’s this or the other.

“There’s a lot of areas where we have already identified clearly, and we are already working in Silverstone to address them.

“It won’t be an overnight fix. It’s not a five-minute job. It’s obviously a lot of work involved, a lot of learning, a lot of optimising, but we have the confidence and we have the team, we have the resources. We have everything in place.

“So, yes, we are not where we want to be, but we have the people, and this is the most important thing. We are much better prepared than last year or the year before, when I arrived at the team to actually pull it around.”

Pressed on how long a time it would take for Aston Martin to achieve its targets, De la Rosa did not commit to a timeline, adding that the team is currently unsure where its performance ceiling lies – though “only time will tell” if it will be enough to catch the frontrunners.

Asked if the team will be able to fix its early problems quickly, he replied: “I mean, yes, of course, in a short time. What is a short time? You know, in racing, every race [takes time, ed.], but it won’t be an overnight fix.

“Already, we don’t know where our limit is either – because we haven’t entered the optimising phase of development.

“We are just trying to understand what we have and where the regulations sit and where we can push in many areas.

“So, will it be fixable? I mean, only time will tell. I have the confidence with the people we have, resources, it will be done, even if we are four seconds or whatever off the pace.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Want to be the first to know exclusive information from the F1 paddock? Join our broadcast channel on WhatsApp to get the scoop on the latest developments from our team of accredited journalists.

You can also subscribe to the PlanetF1 YouTube channel for exclusive features, hear from our paddock journalists with stories from the heart of Formula 1 and much more!

Read next: George Russell rejects Verstappen ‘Formula E’ dig but flags F1 2026 flaw