While F1 is on its summer break ahead of the final stretch of the season, some teams have already been able to work towards next season, which is set to revolutionize F1. Hungaroring is the venue Pirelli has chosen, taking advantage of the last race, to conduct its tire tests for next season. McLaren, Alpine, Racing Bulls and Ferrari are the teams responsible for carrying out these tests, with other teams, such as Aston Martin, left out.
Aston Martin out of testing
These tests for 2026 come just after the Hungarian Grand Prix last weekend and at the start of the summer break for most drivers and teams. Pirelli wanted to test the soft C3, C4, and C5 tires, which must be approved on the last day of August. The results are of great interest to Aston Martin, which has suffered excessively from tire wear in recent years.
The new F1 tires
Everything will be smaller in 2026: the cars, the chassis, the weight… and the size of the tires will be reduced by 22 millimeters at the front and 300 at the rear, although they will remain 18 inches wide. This will cause a radical change in the behavior of the cars, as there will be less grip than at present. Although the performance of the tires will be shared by Pirelli, the teams that have already worked with them will have first-hand information to measure the direct impact on their cars, an important advantage over their rivals in the race to be better prepared for 2026.
Aston Martin will have to rely on the data and include it in its simulator, one of the tools that the team is finding most difficult to calibrate, as Adrian Newey acknowledged a few weeks ago, although the scenario painted by the British engineer was worse than the real one. This does not detract from the fact that it will be a major challenge for the Silverstone factory, which will have to find the right balance to adjust the tires to the suspension and aerodynamics of the AMR26.
Tests with the mobile front wing
The mobile front wing is another of the major new features introduced in the 2026 regulations, which will make DRS a thing of the past. The FIA has authorized teams to test it in these tests, although no one has used it so far. It will not be the final wing, as there are still some loose ends regarding its regulations, but if the experimental phases can be used to test its performance, this would be another major advantage for the teams participating in the tests.
The novelty of this wing is that it allows real-time changes to the aerodynamic load, which will have a direct impact on the tires, hence why it has been allowed. The FIA wants to see first-hand how these new tools combine with the new aerodynamic adjustments due to the radical change in regulations in 2026.
Pirelli collects the first data
Although the idea was not to set lap times, but rather to collect data on tire performance, given that these are soft tires, and taking last Saturday’s qualifying as a reference, knowing that the cars used are those from 2023 and 2025 in the case of Ferrari, and that track conditions were similar to those of last weekend, the best time of the day was set by Aron, with Alpine, with a time of 1:18.789, three seconds slower than the best time set by Leclerc in last Saturday’s qualifying, which stopped the clock at 1:15.372.
Aston Martin is closely monitoring these tests and eagerly awaiting the data from Pirelli, as it could be key for next season. At the moment, they seem to be slightly slower and degrade more than the current compounds, so they will need to continue optimizing the AMR26 to ensure this does not become a problem for the new season.