TEAM PREVIEW: Aston Martin – All you need to know about the team ahead of the 2026 F1 season

With all-new regulations coming into play, 2026 is supposed to be the year where Aston Martin show what they’re made of. The squad have invested heavily in their operation – be it in their facility or securing an exclusive deal with Honda as power unit supplier – and we will soon see the full potential of Adrian Newey’s latest creation. Will we have a new contender fighting at the front? Here’s everything you need to know about Aston Martin ahead of the upcoming season...

Drivers for 2026

Fernando Alonso #14: 2 World Championships, 32 wins, 106 podiums, 22 pole positions, 2393 points, 425 starts
Lance Stroll #18: 3 podiums, 1 pole position, 325 points, 189 starts

For the fourth season in a row, Aston Martin go into the campaign with a driver pairing of two-time World Champion Fernando Alonso alongside Lance Stroll.

After returning from his F1 break (the Spaniard skipped the 2019 and 2020 seasons), Alonso spent two years with Alpine before switching to Aston Martin for 2023. His start to life at the Silverstone-based team was electric to say the least – he scored six podium finishes in the first eight Grands Prix of the year.

While that impressive form couldn’t be sustained as Aston Martin’s performance levels dipped, Alonso remains one of the finest operators in the sport. He is the most experienced driver on the grid at the age of 44, has 425 Grand Prix starts, and he also holds two World Championships having won the 2005 and 2006 titles for Renault.

Stroll, meanwhile, is an experienced operator himself as he enters his eighth season with the team, which is owned by his father Lawrence. The Canadian joined under their previous Racing Point guise in 2019 – two years after debuting in F1 at Williams.

How did Aston Martin do in 2025?

A final placing of seventh in the 2025 Teams’ Championship does not reflect where Aston Martin want to be – that represented a fall of two places on where they finished each of the previous two campaigns.

There were also contrasting fortunes for the two drivers. Alonso began the year in difficult form and failed to score a point until Round 9 in Barcelona, but upgrades delivered during that European triple header helped turn the tide.

From that moment onwards Alonso responded by taking points at every round up until the summer break – bar a difficult weekend in Belgium. He then continued to deliver impressive performances with points-scoring finishes coming in Zandvoort, Singapore, Austin, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. What’s more, his sixth place in the finale helped lift him into the top 10 of the Drivers’ Championship.

In contrast, Stroll began the year incredibly strongly. He took sixth in the rain-affected Australian Grand Prix but that would be his best result of the year. By the time the August break arrived both drivers were on 26 points apiece, but Alonso went on to collect a further 30 points in the final 10 rounds of the year compared to Stroll’s seven in the same period (six of which came courtesy of his seventh-place finish in Zandvoort).

History

The Aston Martin name first appeared in F1 way back in 1959 and 1960 – though they failed to score a point under the system being used at the time. They then exited the sport and did not return until the manufacturer struck up a sponsorship arrangement with Red Bull Racing from 2016-2020.

As for the current F1 entry that Aston Martin effectively took over in 2021, its history goes back to Jordan Grand Prix’s arrival in 1991. They were the plucky, underdog team who gave Michael Schumacher his F1 debut as well as giving F1’s big hitters a run for their money.

With the squad’s form dipping and their finances dwindling, eponymous founder Eddie Jordan – who passed away in March 2025 – sold up to the Midland Group in 2005. That was followed by further buy-outs and rebrands from Dutch sportscar group Spyker and Indian businessman Vijay Mallya.

Mallya’s Force India operation competed in F1 from 2008 and went on to score six podium finishes and a pole position, but eventually entered administration in 2018 – after which a consortium led by Lawrence Stroll bought their assets and introduced the Racing Point name.

Stroll’s subsequent purchase of a stake in Aston Martin saw him combine both interests and, from the 2021 season, his team have been named after the famous British manufacturer in a full works effort.

Greatest achievement

With little to shout about from that initial F1 stint, and only a few seasons to look back on since making a comeback, Aston Martin’s obvious highlight so far is their stunning start in 2023 with two-time champion Alonso.

As mentioned above, the Spaniard reached the podium at six of the opening eight races and came close to winning amid changeable weather conditions in Monaco, before mid-season updates failed to hit the mark and rival teams edged ahead.

But with bold ambitions, perhaps this section will be updated in the near future…

One key goal for 2026

For Aston Martin, 2026 is where we see what the squad is really made of after unparalleled change, investment and partnerships come together for the all-new rules cycle – and the reset in the pecking order that brings with it.

Firstly, there’s the Adrian Newey factor – the famed F1 designer joined the team in March 2025 as Managing Technical Partner after almost 20 years at Red Bull, and his record speaks for itself. The Briton has 25 World Championships under his belt throughout an esteemed career at the Milton Keynes-based outfit, as well as McLaren and Williams before that.

His primary focus since joining Aston Martin has been leading the design team with 2026 in mind and his first creation has already got people talking. Mercedes’ George Russell couldn’t help but describe the AMR26 as “pretty spectacular” after it rolled out of the garage at the Barcelona Shakedown.

But, while Newey the F1 designer is a known quantity, Newey the Team Principal is brand new. In 2026 the 67-year-old takes on the role of Aston Martin Team Principal (the first time he’s ever assumed that position) with previous incumbent Andy Cowell moving to the role of Chief Strategy Officer in order to focus on Aston Martin’s partnership with Honda. Time will tell if those added responsibilities dilute his design focus, though he insists it will not.

This also brings us onto Honda, who have become Aston Martin’s exclusive power unit supplier following a long-standing relationship with Red Bull. That previous partnership brought plenty of success and Aston Martin will be hoping for something similar.

Couple that with the incredible investment in their Silverstone facility, and Aston Martin’s goal for 2026 is clear – they have to prove they are well on their way to becoming F1’s next super team. That means fighting towards the front and being in the mix for wins, with the squad setting themselves the goal of one day winning back-to-back championships.