How the Hungarian Grand Prix showed Aston Martin are ‘back racing’ after upgrades work

The Hungarian Grand Prix was a huge weekend for Aston Martin, with so much expectation around the revised chassis package.

To the relief of Adrian Newey and all concerned there was clear progress. Having been last by some margin just a week earlier at Spa, Aston Martin jumped both Cadillac and Williams cars in Qualifying, and added Haas to the list in the race – as well as one Alpine.

It was an impressive achievement given the misery of the past six months. Attention now turns not just to the revised power unit which Honda is testing this week and bringing to Zandvoort, but also to the next round of aero upgrades, as Hungary was just the start.

“I think we came here and we said the main objective is to go back racing,” said Chief Trackside Officer Mike Krack after the flag. “I think we achieved that. The upgrade package works, and now we need to bring the next steps.”

What the team could not have anticipated was where the revised AMR26 fell in the midfield pecking order, and jumping three teams in one hit was a welcome validation of the numbers.

“The expectation was a lap time improvement or a percentage improvement,” said Krack. “And you never know what the competition brings, so you cannot say, ‘I will be in front of this one, or I will be behind this one.’

“So in these situations you have to be factual, and stick with the numbers. And then comes the competitivity that is obviously influenced by a lot of things.

“If you remember on Thursday, I said, ‘Where will [we] end up? We don’t know.’ The midfield is so close that you cannot really say before.”

Hungary was far from a perfect weekend, however. Lance Stroll suffered a worrying suspension failure early in FP1 and lost the rest of the day, which meant that only Fernando Alonso’s car was able to log mileage.

The potential was seen in Qualifying, when Alonso made it into Q2 and earned P16 – a landmark for the team in 2026. Stroll was still playing catch-up, and caught out by a gust of wind he qualified in P20.

The two drivers followed very different strategies in the race. Both started on softs, as has often been the case in 2026. However, while Stroll pitted after just eight laps in an attempt to get some clean air, Alonso ran a marathon 34 laps on that first set.

“I think we must not forget also the tyre side,” said Krack. “Once again, we have taken alternative tyre choices, and I think they were very good. But this is part of the whole game.

“If you have a car that can do it, you take maybe less conservative choices on tyres, and then the whole thing works better. So all in all, this always goes hand in hand with the energy, with the grip, with the tyres you fit, with the strategies you choose.”

Alonso had the upper hand for most of the race, until he became one of several drivers to switch to softs under the late VSC triggered by Oscar Piastri. That dropped him behind his team mate.

“We were flexible in terms of strategy, and we tried different things with both cars,” said Krack. “They ended close to each other. We had also the VSC that was ending at the same time, where Fernando was in the pit lane, which lost certainly some seconds.”

After a run of poor reliability in races (and indeed Stroll’s Friday suspension failure) getting both cars safely home in P13 and P14 was another box ticked for the team, with plenty of data logged.

“I think it’s not a secret that we have had issues in the beginning of the year,” said Krack. “And you don’t only look at the performance development, but you also look at the reliability. Because no performance in the world will help you if the car breaks down, and you cannot develop your performance if the car breaks down.

“We said many times at the beginning of the year, the most important thing is that we finish races, that we learn driveability, shifting, energy management.

“And I think it is only [through] step by step learning that you can make the car reliable by fixing the issues that you’re having.”

So how much more is there to come as Honda steps up a gear and the team brings more chassis upgrades?

“That’s difficult to say,” Krack conceded. “We will know in the next events if we find more performance or not. We lost a bit of time this weekend with Lance after the issue in FP1, so he didn’t drive in FP2. So for sure we missed a bit of time to optimise everything.

“We take it from there, and we see what we can unlock in the next races. We have not driven much so far, so everything was new. We had issues, so we’re trying to have a good look at the data. And then we see in Zandvoort if we can get more out of the package.”