Aston Martin F1 Warns Against Hungary Hype Despite Major Upgrade
· Yahoo Sports
Journalists who had previously written off the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend are apparently rearranging their travel plans. That, on its own, tells you something about the level of anticipation building around Aston Martin‘s first significant upgrade of the 2026 season. Pedro de la Rosa would like you to take a breath.
Speaking to DAZN ahead of this weekend’s British Grand Prix, the team’s ambassador was asked about the growing buzz surrounding the package Aston Martin plan to introduce at the Hungaroring on July 24-26. His response was measured to the point of being deliberate:
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“My job is also to send a message of calm. That is to say, we are very far away. We are very far from the front [of the grid]. That is the reality, that is our reality. So, is it going to be a big step? Yes, but because we are very far away. So we don’t want to say where we think we will be, nor where we want to be.”
The candour is appreciated, even if it doubles as expectation management. Aston Martin currently occupy the bottom of the constructors’ standings, having accumulated just one point across the opening eight rounds of the season – scored by Fernando Alonso, with Lance Stroll yet to register any. Together the two drivers have accumulated nine retirements and one non-classified finish across the opening rounds, with Miami the only round in which both cars saw the chequered flag. At points this season, the squad – which entered 2026 with Adrian Newey as their car designer and a factory Honda power unit agreement – has found itself trailing by as much as a full second.
What the Hungary Package Actually Is
Newey confirmed the upgrade arrives at both cars in Budapest, describing it as a substantial aerodynamic overhaul paired with meaningful weight reduction. Per Newey, the chassis and gearbox architecture remain fundamentally unchanged, but both have had weight stripped out – a process that required re-homologation and fresh crash testing of the forward chassis. The team opted early in the season against bringing race-by-race incremental updates, banking performance credits toward this single larger package instead. Newey acknowledged it was “a painful decision” that left the team falling further back in relative terms with every passing round while rivals iterated freely.
What this is not, per multiple reports, is a B-spec concept change. The AMR26’s underlying philosophy stays intact; the focus has been on clawing back two specific deficiencies – a shortage of downforce and a car sitting too far above the weight limit.
“For me, the most important thing is that we give Fernando and Lance a car they can fight with,” De la Rosa said on the bottom line. “Where exactly, destiny will decide that. But that they can fight. Right now they can’t fight because they aren’t in a fight with anyone.”
Alonso, who is out of contract at the end of the year with Alpine said to be among his potential suitors, has consistently positioned the Hungarian result as a single piece of evidence rather than a definitive conclusion. There’s obvious pressure on the upgrade to perform – Newey has said Alonso’s commitment to 2027 is contingent on visible, tangible progress – but the two-time world champion himself told F1.com that “there are more things on the table” beyond how fast the car is on a single weekend in late July.
De la Rosa, incidentally, knows the Hungaroring rather well. His only Formula 1 podium came there in 2006. Whether Aston Martin can celebrate anything at the same venue twenty years later is, as he put it, for destiny to decide.