16 Aug 2026
After the worst start of any established team in 2026 — 10th in the constructors' championship on a single point — Aston Martin's 16-part upgrade at the Hungarian Grand Prix cut their race-day deficit from over five seconds a lap to close to two, with Honda's first in-season engine upgrade arriving this weekend at the Dutch Grand Prix.
Aston Martin go into the Dutch Grand Prix carrying their best form of a season that, until last month, had been the worst of any established team on the grid. Eleven rounds in, the team sits 10th in the constructors' championship with a single point — from Fernando Alonso's tenth-place finish in Monaco — ahead of only new entrant Cadillac. A 16-part upgrade package introduced at the Hungarian Grand Prix has since moved them back into contention with the midfield, and Honda's first in-season power unit upgrade arrives this weekend at Zandvoort.
The scale of the turnaround shows in the pace data. Aston Martin's race-day deficit to the fastest car had been running at over five seconds a lap at Silverstone and Spa — tracks less dependent on power unit performance — and had averaged 4.670% off the pace across the season before Hungary, worse than every team except Cadillac. In Hungary, with the new bodywork, floor and sidepods fitted, that gap fell to 2.034 seconds a lap. Alonso qualified into Q2 for the first time all year and finished 14th, one place behind Stroll's season-best 13th.
The Hungary package, confirmed in FIA technical documents as 16 separate changes, included a longer and more slender nose, a new floor, revised sidepod inlets and multiple changes to the rear of the car. Team principal Adrian Newey, who led the chassis design, called it only the first phase of a longer plan: "we'll have some more steps in Zandvoort and then further steps in Monza/Baku." Chief trackside officer Mike Krack said the pace gain matched what the team had hoped for: "the upgrade package works, and now we need to bring the next steps."
Qualifying has been difficult for both drivers all year, but Alonso has generally out-qualified his teammate and held the edge in their head-to-head on race days too. Hungary was one of the rare weekends that went Stroll's way, finishing 13th to Alonso's 14th, after a season that has also included a practice suspension failure for the Canadian.
The other half of the recovery plan is Honda's. Aston Martin's power unit has been a season-long weak point, and Honda is using its first Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities allowance — the mechanism that lets manufacturers behind the pace catch up mid-season — to bring an upgraded engine this weekend at Zandvoort, its first race after the summer break. The team shook the new unit down at a filming day in Budapest the week after Hungary, and Honda has said the update could be worth as much as 30 horsepower.
Whether that translates into points is a separate question. The chassis gain has closed most of the gap to the midfield without yet scoring with it — Hungary produced two finishes outside the top ten, not points, and Aston Martin's solitary point all year still stands from Monaco back in June. Newey has framed the target as competitiveness rather than results for now, aiming simply to reach a respectable level of pace, with further chassis updates still to come at Monza and Baku in September. Zandvoort will be the first real test of whether the upgrade and the new engine combine to actually move the team up the order, rather than just closer to it.
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