Lance Stroll is bleak about Aston Martin ahead of the Australian GP. The Canadian recorded his first proper test kilometres in the AMR26 in Bahrain – in Barcelona he previously managed only four installation laps – and concludes that the 2026 challenger is currently nowhere near quick enough to keep pace with the top teams when they head to Melbourne. ‘It looks at the moment like we’re 4.5 seconds off the top teams,’ Stroll says.
The test days have so far been anything but smooth for Aston Martin. During the shakedown in Barcelona the AMR26 – the British team’s first car designed by Adrian Newey – only hit the track on the fourth day in the final hour. Lance Stroll then did just four laps. The Canadian fared much better with 36 laps on the first test day in Bahrain, before Fernando Alonso crossed the line 55 times in the morning session the following day. What worried Stroll, however, was that his team-mate’s best lap was 4.6 seconds slower than Charles Leclerc’s quickest time.
The Canadian was therefore asked on Thursday whether Aston Martin can close that gap to the other teams in the three weeks before the Australian GP starts. “I don’t know,” Stroll tells The Race candidly. “It looks at the moment like we’re four or 4.5 seconds behind the top teams. Of course you can’t know how much fuel everyone is carrying, but we still need to find four seconds.”
‘The weather in Bahrain is nice’
According to Stroll, Aston Martin’s loss of pace isn’t down to a single fault on the AMR26. “It’s a combination of the power unit, the balance and the grip. It’s not one thing, it’s everything together.” The Canadian also says the car currently doesn’t feel great on downshifts and when braking into corners. Stroll adds there’s only one genuinely positive takeaway from the test days for Aston Martin: “It’s sunny outside. The weather is nice, much better than in the United Kingdom. And the livery looks good.”
Still, Aston Martin aren’t giving up, Stroll is quick to say. “No one stands still in this sport, everyone tries in every possible way – every weekend – to improve. We do the same. We’re trying to extract more performance from the car every day, also over the long term. We do that by bringing upgrades to both the power unit and the chassis. We’ll see where we are in Australia and then we’ll track our progress through the season. We’re working as hard as we can, and that’s all we can do right now.”
