That chassis upgrade will be added to just under a month later when Honda bring a new engine to the Netherlands – the Japanese manufacturer now working much more cohesively with Aston Martin after some early frustrations.
“We had a tough moment in winter testing, but I’d say we built up our relationship through the tough moment, and we built up the fundamentals to work together,” said Honda’s Trackside General Manager and Chief Engineer, Shintaro Orihara. “Every tough moment, we can learn from that.”
Krack added: “It’s easy to point the finger, but we sat together and we said, ‘We are in this together. We need to work hard to get out of it together’.
“We knew that there would be a lot of difficult moments. We had more than one meeting where we discussed this, and I think it improved the relationship big time – in the garage, in the engineering office, and also in the whole technical collaboration between [Aston Martin’s factory in] Silverstone and [Honda’s engine headquarters in] Sakura.
“Believe me, it was tough, but it is something that you have to go through, and then you improve from there.
“I think we need to be grown up, we need be professional, in such situations, and we need to get ourselves out of it. If we manage to be in the game again very soon, then I think we can maybe sit together, look back at these last six months, and take all the positives that we learned from it.”
The extra driving force at Aston Martin’s factory
In Belgium last time out, there were three drivers in action for Aston Martin over the weekend as reserve Jak Crawford – runner-up in F2 last season – made his latest FP1 outing of 2026 after appearances in Japan and Austria.
Alongside Alonso and Stroll, the 21-year-old American has been playing a crucial role in Aston Martin’s development push, complementing his real-life runs with hours and hours in the simulator, where he has already sampled the upgraded AMR26.
“I think this will be the last ‘not good’ race we’ll have – I think it will be one of the worst,” Crawford told F1.com at Spa. “The circuit is very tough on the power unit and everything, so we expected to struggle a lot here, plus having this car that’s now quite old.
“But looking forward, for sure, everyone is excited for the new car. We’re not expecting to blow everyone away, but I think it’s a step in the right direction of what’s to come for the next couple of years.”
He continued: “Of course, we’ve been preparing for these new upgrades – we have a model in the sim, even though we haven’t driven on the track. It’s just an estimation that we try. When you have it [for real], you have a better idea of where your car stands and you’re able to correlate that into the simulator.
“I’m taking a lot of good information from Fernando, from Lance, from the engineers. I’m super fortunate to be able to work with all these engineers that trust me like one of the race drivers, I think, which is great. When I run in the sim, they trust what I say and trust what I’m doing.
“My feedback goes to everyone in the factory. They’re all trying to make the cars as good as possible, as driveable as possible, for the next race, and everyone, I’m sure, has been listening to every comment very closely.”
Only time will tell if Aston Martin and Honda’s upgrades deliver significant steps forward over the next couple of events, but there is no doubting the effort that has gone in across the board to turn the situation around and put those self-described “tough times” behind them.
.webp?ssl=1 "40 years of the Hungarian Grand Prix")
