Aston Martin is going from bad to worse and it doesn’t look like the situation is going to improve this season with the AMR25 driven by Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll. It’s clear that if the suffering of 2025 serves to emulate what BrawnGP achieved in 2009, it will have been worth it. But situations like this have rarely occurred in the history of Formula 1.
In 2025, Aston Martin seems, at times, like the tenth car… out of ten
Yes, Lance Stroll scored points in the first two races, which were eventful or marked by disqualifications, but Fernando Alonso has yet to score after six Grand Prix races. And the AMR25 is an improvement on its predecessor, in theory, but it is worse than all of its direct and indirect rivals on the grid.
At times, it looks like the tenth car out of ten. And in that sense, it seems difficult to design a revolution for the 2026 season. That is in the hands of Adrian Newey, who has been tasked with creating the car that the Asturian driver (and his fans) so desperately want.
The Aston Martin boss even revealed in Miami that once they had started up their own wind tunnel (which has been in operation since the Australian Grand Prix), they had encountered some negative surprises in the data from the other simulation tools they use to design parts and bring them to the car: “What we see is that 12 months ago the tools seemed accurate, but now we say no, it’s not good enough. What we’ve seen in the last 12 to 18 months is that the tools we have are not as strong.”
Of course, the green team is not doing anything as radical as what was seen at the time with the aforementioned BrawnGP, if only because FIA regulations prohibited the use of wind tunnels and other simulation tools for the 2026 car until January 1 of this year.
Their performance is reminiscent of Honda in 2008. Then came BrawnGP and…
But what does seem clear is that the AMR25 is not going to receive much more attention. In fact, its performance is quite similar to that of the 2008 Honda, driven at the time by Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello: the Brazilian scored 11 points and the Briton just 3. A few months later, the two were dominating the top spots, with up to five one-two finishes in 17 races in the 2009 season.
For Aston Martin, the road ahead may be somewhat similar. The results from Aston Martin’s new wind tunnel have left all the engineers speechless. The numbers produced by the AMR25 model don’t add up, pointing clearly to its creator. Until now, Aston Martin had shared facilities with Brackley, the Mercedes factory.
The AMR25 will not receive any more attention
The construction of its own wind tunnel promised to be a turning point in the development of Lawrence Stroll’s team, but so far all it has done is expose the shortcomings of the car designed by Dan Fallows.
The AMR25 was born in the Mercedes wind tunnel. However, the data provided by this infrastructure and that provided by the new one do not match, leaving the technical team in diapers for the development of the 2025 car.
For a team that has ambitions to win races and championships under the next F1 regulations, especially after having invested millions in state-of-the-art facilities and signed design legend Adrian Newey, its current performance is well below the minimum expected by team owner Lawrence Stroll.
A conclave has been held to find the culprit behind the AMR25 fiasco. The cause could lie in its new wind tunnel. The lack of correlation between the aerodynamic tools has led to a thorough rethink.
They currently occupy seventh place in the Constructors’ Championship, although if they continue like this, it would not be surprising if the Silverstone team ended the season even further down the standings. Now more than ever, all hopes are pinned on 2026 and the change in regulations.