After numerous problems during test drives in Bahrain, Ralf Schumacher believes that Aston Martin and Honda have difficult weeks and months ahead of them.
After the test drives ahead of the 2026 Formula 1 season in Bahrain, expert Ralf Schumacher has doubts as to whether Aston Martin currently has a package that can even make it to the finish line in the first races of the year. In Sakhir, the racing team drove fewer kilometers than any other team.
“It’s a huge disaster,” Schumacher said on Sky’s Backstage Boxengasse podcast. “Everything is coming together,” said the six-time Grand Prix winner, who said of the current situation at Aston Martin: “The car isn’t good and the engine is bad.”
“It couldn’t be much worse,” said Schumacher, after the team completed just 334 laps in the two weeks of testing in Bahrain. By comparison, Formula 1 newcomer Cadillac was the team with the second fewest laps, completing 586 – still 252 more than Aston Martin.
The low point was the last day of testing, when Lance Stroll was only able to complete six laps because engine partner Honda ran out of spare parts. Schumacher therefore wonders “whether it will even be possible to finish the races at the beginning.”
Because Aston Martin was repeatedly stopped by problems during testing, Schumacher emphasizes that we now have to wait and see whether these can be fixed “in this short time” before the start of the season, and he sees Honda as primarily responsible for this.
“They were the ones who wanted the electric component [in the engine], which is now causing them the most problems,” he says, referring to the Japanese. “The question is: Can this be fixed with the existing concept, or do we need to start from scratch?” says Schumacher.
Many fans are already recalling Honda’s return to Formula 1 in 2015 with McLaren. Back then, Kevin Magnussen didn’t even make it onto the starting grid at the season opener in Australia, while his teammate Jenson Button crossed the finish line two laps down.
Should Aston Martin experience a similar debacle, Schumacher warns: “You have to stay calm now, because otherwise a team like this will fall apart.” Fernando Alonso is “mega frustrated,” and new team boss Adrian Newey is also “very, very disappointed,” Schumacher believes.
“There’s a lot of pressure on the team,” he says, emphasizing that the team now needs to be given ‘time’ to get the situation under control. “And, of course, we have to make sure that they don’t tear each other apart now. It’s a big test of patience,” says Schumacher.
