Honda is preparing a heavily upgraded power unit for Aston Martin for the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, aiming for a meaningful step forward after a difficult start to the season. Honda trackside general manager Shintaro Orihara described the package as a “reasonably big” step, with internal changes focused on the combustion chamber, lubrication system, reliability and drivability. Honda said the upgrade is planned for the first race after the summer break and is intended to work alongside Aston Martin’s revised chassis if the schedule holds.

Orihara said the update is not a wholesale redesign and will not immediately close the gap to Mercedes or Red Bull Powertrains. He said it should be viewed as the first stage of a longer development program rather than a complete fix. The Dutch Grand Prix’s Sprint format also leaves little time to diagnose and solve issues before Sprint Qualifying on Friday.

The upgrade comes after Honda’s 2026 engine struggled with both reliability and a lack of power, leaving Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll near the back of the grid in recent races. Aston Martin plans to debut its B-spec AMR26 one race earlier in Hungary, and the team is 10th in the constructors’ standings with its only points so far coming from Alonso’s P10 finish in Monaco.

Lewis Hamilton set the pace in the only practice session for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, giving his home crowd plenty to cheer on the opening day of the weekend. Hamilton’s best lap of 1:29.260 put him 0.213 seconds ahead of Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli, with Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc third and George Russell fourth. Hamilton had played down expectations before the weekend, but his early speed suggested strong form at a circuit where he has won nine times before as he chased a record-breaking eighth world title and a 10th Silverstone victory.

The session took place during a compressed sprint weekend, with teams getting just one hour of practice before sprint qualifying later on Friday. In bright, dry 23C conditions, all drivers began on hard tires while gathering setup and tire data, then switched to softer rubber late in the hour. Antonelli briefly went quickest before Hamilton reclaimed first place, while Leclerc and Russell completed the top four. Oscar Piastri, Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, Isack Hadjar, Nico Hülkenberg and Liam Lawson rounded out the top 10.

Piastri spun at Becketts, and Norris went out early and finished more than a second off the pace. McLaren and Red Bull looked a little behind the leading runners. Audi impressed on a single lap, with Hülkenberg inside the top 10, while Cadillac’s upgraded package appeared to bring it closer to Aston Martin, although reliability concerns were not fully resolved. Organizers expected a record British Grand Prix crowd of 500,000 spectators.

Carlos Sainz has called for Formula 1 to change how qualifying interruptions are punished, proposing a three-place grid penalty for any driver who causes a yellow or red flag, even if the incident is unintentional. He said the rule would reduce gamesmanship, discourage drivers from benefiting when another competitor’s crash interrupts the session, and provide a stricter deterrent. Sainz said he plans to raise the idea with both the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association and the FIA.

The push followed a disputed qualifying session at the Austrian Grand Prix, where George Russell took pole for Mercedes after Max Verstappen’s crash brought out yellow flags. Russell was judged to have slowed enough under the current rules to keep his lap, and Sainz said he had followed the rulebook and “played the rules to perfection.” Even so, Sainz argued the lap should not have been allowed to continue in what he viewed as a dangerous situation.

Sainz said Verstappen’s incident should have led to double yellow flags or a red flag, and that the current system can give an unfair advantage to a driver who continues after causing an interruption. Kimi Antonelli also abandoned his lap because he believed double yellows were in place, and Charles Leclerc said a penalty rule could make sense at some circuits but not as a blanket standard across every track.

Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari head to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix with the weekend framed as a test of how far the team has come after a strong win in Barcelona and a more sobering run in Austria. Hamilton called Ferrari’s pace in Austria a “reality check,” saying the team was losing about four-tenths of a second on the straights and still had work to do to close the gap to its rivals. Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said the team had studied what went wrong at Spielberg and expects a better showing at Silverstone, where the team will try to see whether Hamilton’s recent success can lead to another strong result.