Aston Martin are still waiting for their 2026 season to get moving after three rounds, with no World Championship point on the board and both cars stranded at the bottom of the Constructors’ Championship with Cadillac. The team’s only clear bright spot in Japan was survival: Fernando Alonso finished the Japanese Grand Prix in 18th place after 52 laps, while Lance Stroll and Alonso at least got through practice and qualifying with fewer problems than before.
The scale of the opening-weekend struggle is stark. Across the six days of pre-season testing in Bahrain and the first and second test combined, Aston Martin completed 334 laps, the fewest of any team and far behind McLaren’s 821. That lack of running carried into the season, when neither car was classified as finishing in Australia because of reliability issues and neither Aston Martin car finished the Chinese Grand Prix.
Alonso’s 17th place on the Melbourne grid remains Aston Martin’s best starting slot of the season so far, but even that came with limits. In Australia, Adrian Newey said vibrations were limiting how many consecutive laps the car could run before reliability became a factor, while Alonso believed he could manage only 25 laps in its current state and Stroll said 15. Those numbers capture how narrow the margin has been between racing and breakdown.
The Japan weekend at least suggested the team is edging toward steadier ground. Alonso managed 52 laps at Suzuka and came home one lap down, and Aston Martin got both cars through practice and qualifying with fewer issues than in the first three races. The April break now gives the team a chance to catch up on development and manufacturing parts, after starting the year short on battery components and with Honda still working on the vibration issues during the pause.
That leaves Aston Martin in a race against the calendar as much as against the field. Mercedes are leading the way at the moment, with Ferrari and McLaren also impressing, and Andy Cowell spent time in Japan looking for signs that Honda could help unlock more of the power unit’s potential. For Aston Martin, the next step is not one breakthrough lap but enough dependable running to turn a promising-looking chassis into a car that can finish, qualify and score.
