---
title: "Aston Martin's 2026 F1 pre-season: Honda power unit problems explained"
publishDate: 2026-02-26T12:15:39.237Z
lastUpdated: 2026-02-26T12:54:38.202Z
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html: https://tarmactimes.com/en/f1/articles/aston-martins-2026-f1-pre-season-honda-power-unit-problems-explained/vdkrxd
md: https://tarmactimes.com/en/f1/articles/aston-martins-2026-f1-pre-season-honda-power-unit-problems-explained/vdkrxd/llms.txt
---
Featured image: 
On paper, Aston Martin looked like one of the teams best placed to capitalise on 2026's regulation reset. A new factory. A wind tunnel finally up and running. Adrian Newey on board. An exclusive supply deal with Honda, who spent four seasons powering Max Verstappen to back-to-back titles.
Then testing happened.
## The Honda problem, explained
The short version: Honda is behind. When they agreed to supply Aston Martin exclusively, they were rebuilding from scratch. The manufacturer had kept only a skeleton F1 department after signalling their intention to leave the sport in 2021, and that workforce was largely gone by the time a full comeback was confirmed. The staff who built Verstappen's title-winning engines had moved on. Honda had to start again, and they started later than everyone else.
The new 2026 power units are enormously complex. The electrical side accounts for roughly half of total output, and that is where Aston Martin's troubles have been concentrated. Battery failures, parts shortages, and limited running have followed the team across both Bahrain tests.
### The numbers make grim reading
The lap count tells the story clearly. Across all 11 days of pre-season running, including the Barcelona shakedown,[ Aston Martin covered 2,111km.](https://tarmactimes.com/en/f1/articles/2026-bahrain-pre-season-testing--week-2--day-3-recap/dpfmx4) Mercedes managed 6,193km. Even Cadillac, a brand new team making their Formula 1 debut, accumulated nearly twice the mileage.
Week two in Bahrain was particularly bleak. The team totalled 128 laps across three days. To put that in perspective: Arvid Lindblad, a rookie, did 165 laps on his own on the final day for Racing Bulls.
On the last day of testing, Lance Stroll managed six laps before Honda's battery shortage brought the programme to an early end, with over two hours of running still on the clock. Fernando Alonso's best time across the whole test sat 4.6 seconds off the pace.
| Team | Total pre-season km |
| --- | --- |
| Mercedes | 6,193 |
| Haas | 6,095 |
| Ferrari | 6,090 |
| McLaren | 5,759 |
| Racing Bulls | 5,458 |
| Alpine | 5,289 |
| Red Bull | 5,048 |
| Audi | 4,966 |
| Williams | 4,275 |
| Cadillac | 3,935 |
| Aston Martin | 2,111 |
### Why being the sole Honda customer makes this worse
Every other team with a troubled power unit can lean on data from their sister squad. When Mercedes has a problem, McLaren, Alpine, and Williams are all accumulating information on the same unit. The picture builds quickly.
Aston Martin have nobody. Honda's issues are theirs alone, and every lap they lose to reliability failures is a lap of setup and development data they will never recover. The team confirmed during the final day of week two testing that a battery shortage was directly preventing further running, not just a precautionary measure.
After the final day, Lance Stroll kept it real.
– It's clear the car isn't where we want it to be performance-wise. There's a long season ahead, and we'll keep pushing flat out to unlock more performance.
That is the kind of statement that covers a wide range of outcomes. It could mean a difficult opening stretch before Honda finds its feet. It could mean something worse. The team simply does not know yet, because they have not run enough.
## Where does this leave Alonso?
This is the part of the story I find genuinely uncomfortable to write about.
Alonso spent two decades waiting for the chance to drive an Adrian Newey car. He got it. He also, for the second time in his career, finds himself in an exclusive Honda partnership that is not delivering. The 2015 McLaren situation ended badly for everyone involved. The parallels are obvious, even if the circumstances are different.
He is 44. He is almost certainly in the final years of his F1 career. The Silverstone project, with Newey leading technical direction and Andy Cowell running the power unit programme, represented the last realistic shot at the kind of front-running car his talent deserved. Right now, they cannot guarantee he will finish a race in Melbourne.
## Is there a way back?
Testing problems do not always translate into race problems, and Honda's engineers have been working through the data around the clock since Bahrain. [According to Sky Sports](https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12040/13511285), the team and manufacturer believe the core issues can be resolved. There are also nine months of development ahead in a season where the competitive order will shift considerably.
But the structural problem remains. Mileage lost in pre-season cannot be recovered. Every lap of setup learning and power unit correlation that other teams banked in Bahrain, Aston Martin did not. The gap between them and the top four going into Melbourne is not just about raw pace; it is about how much they understand their own car.
Lawrence Stroll has invested heavily in this project. The factory, the talent, the ambition are all real. Pre-season testing, though, has made clear that none of that insulates you when your engine supplier is struggling to put parts on the table.