Author Archives: PressBox

Mercedes pushed back against online speculation that it was favoring either Kimi Antonelli or George Russell in the Formula 1 title fight, with technical director James Allison calling the idea “alien” and “utterly alien” to the team’s Brackley culture. Allison said Mercedes wants both drivers to score as many points as possible, and that the team will continue letting them race freely unless a rival threat makes intervention necessary.

Allison said Mercedes is focused first on the constructors’ championship, which affects prize money, bonuses and overall team performance, rather than either driver’s individual title hopes. He said team orders would only become relevant if one Mercedes driver were mathematically out of contention and the other was still fighting a rival from another team. Toto Wolff voiced a similar view after the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, saying the team would reexamine how Antonelli and Russell are allowed to race after their battle for the lead cost Mercedes time.

The debate intensified after Barcelona, where Russell and Antonelli lost time fighting each other on track before Lewis Hamilton won for Ferrari, his first Grand Prix victory for the team. Wolff said Mercedes has traditionally let its drivers race freely, but the growing title threat from Hamilton could force the team to recalibrate its approach if internal competition keeps costing wins. Antonelli leads Hamilton by 41 points and Russell by 50 heading into the Austrian Grand Prix, with Mercedes under renewed scrutiny over its title-management strategy.

Honda has reaffirmed its long-term commitment to Formula 1 even as its works partnership with Aston Martin has made a difficult start, with HRC president Koji Watanabe saying the project should be judged as a mid-to-long-term effort rather than on this season alone. He said Honda management is unhappy with the current results, but believes the challenge can be overcome, drawing a parallel with Honda’s troubled 2015 return to F1 with McLaren before its later turnaround with Red Bull.

After seven rounds, Aston Martin sat 10th in the constructors’ championship, with Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll struggling to find consistent performance and reliability. Watanabe said this project is harder than Honda’s Red Bull era because nearly everything is new, including the partnership structure, regulations, fuel, lubricant, development cycle and suppliers such as Aramco and Valvoline. He also said Honda’s 2021 exit from F1 slowed development and made it harder to rebuild technical depth and talent.

Honda plans a summer power unit update focused on the internal combustion engine, but Watanabe said it will not bring an immediate turnaround and must be managed within the engine cost cap. Aston Martin is preparing a major aerodynamic package before the summer break, and Honda believes that if the chassis and power unit gains come together, the team can move into midfield contention in the second half of the season. The two sides have also held a unity meeting as they work through the difficult early period in their relationship.

Williams heads into the Austrian Grand Prix with limited confidence after a difficult start to the 2026 Formula 1 season, with Alex Albon warning that the team remains eighth in the constructors’ standings after seven rounds and is still chasing answers. Williams has been trying to recover from a new car that arrived late and overweight, after also missing its planned pre-season shakedown and delaying its opening-race package. Albon’s best finish this season has been eighth in Monaco, a result that has done little to ease concern over the team’s pace.

Albon said Williams is still a significant step behind its midfield rivals in high-speed corners, a weakness he expects could be exposed at the Red Bull Ring, where sectors two and three are fast. He said a mechanical issue found after qualifying in Barcelona could not be fixed under parc ferme rules, leaving him unsure how the car would behave from corner to corner. Barcelona was another difficult weekend for Williams, with Albon finishing 12 laps down after a lengthy stoppage to repair a dislodged camera and both Albon and Carlos Sainz failing to score points.

Sainz said the Spanish Grand Prix showed how far Williams remains from the front-runners, pointing to struggles in medium- and high-speed corners. He said the team was surprised by how uncompetitive the car was, even though it expected a hard weekend, and identified excess weight as one problem and a lack of downforce as the bigger issue. Sainz said the result confirmed Williams is really far from its targets and needs to go back to the drawing board with more upgrades.

Aston Martin began the 2026 season with a catalogue of technical weaknesses that left the team struggling on track and braced for more poor results. Drivers and engineers have logged deficits across the car, and Fernando Alonso called Monaco “zero positives,” warning fans to expect “another four or five races of painful results.” The team reported severe mid-corner understeer in low-speed turns, which it said is a deeper problem than a simple setup issue.

Alonso and team engineers flagged specific failures in the opening rounds: an engine power shortfall in Australia, an energy deficit in China, a chassis weakness revealed at Monaco, and gearbox troubles in Canada and Miami. The team says these issues affected the whole package rather than being isolated to a single area.

Development timing and a power-unit change contributed to the struggles. Aston Martin arrived late to winter testing after switching from customer Mercedes engines to a works Honda power unit. The new Honda unit suffered power and reliability shortfalls early in the season; team ambassador Pedro de la Rosa said Honda’s reliability had recently improved, but the overall package still lagged.

Adrian Newey, who joined as managing technical partner and has since been promoted to team principal, said the team’s new wind tunnel only produced a model in mid-April 2025. He said that delay produced roughly a four-month development setback after the aero-testing ban ended in January 2025. The team said it must make the most of the ADUO (a mechanism allowing limited in-season power-unit development) and expects larger upgrade packages in the second half of the year.

Monaco underlined the performance gap: Aston Martin qualified 21st and 22nd, more than three seconds off Mercedes pole-setter Kimi Antonelli. Alonso climbed from 21st to 10th and secured the team’s first championship point of 2026 after a post-race penalty for Sergio Pérez and several incidents opened a rare opportunity. The result owed much to an aggressive one-stop strategy amid two safety cars, a red flag and seven retirements. De la Rosa called the lone point “special,” suggested the chassis could be as quick as the fifth-fastest package at some circuits, and urged patience and unity while the team prepares upgrades and further analysis to determine whether the understeer will persist.