Aston Martin rejects suggestions its B-spec car is ‘make-or-break’ in Hungary

The 2026 F1 season has been a tough one for Aston Martin's Formula 1 team so far, as it was late delivering its new car and then found a number of weaknesses with its design. Design chief Adrian Newey opted against incremental updates, and instead the team is introducing a heavily-revised car this weekend in Budapest.

Chief trackside officer Mike Krack says there will be plenty of progress that the team needs to make regardless of how it performs.

“No, it will not be a make-or-break weekend,” Krack (pictured middle, above) said. “We are all realistic. We have a plan and we work to that plan. Success and setbacks are part of sport. We have been in a difficult situation or difficult spot before, and we try to get out of it, but there are more steps needed.

“This is part of the development strategy, so I would not call it a make-or-break. It is just the development that needs to continue. We will have these regulations for a couple of years coming, and it's just one step, in my opinion.”

Aston Martin sources have suggested the new car could be worth up to two seconds per lap, and there is a power unit upgrade to follow after the summer break in Zandvoort. However, Krack warns not to expect the team to unlock all of the potential performance instantly.

“The upgrade is a significant aerodynamic upgrade and a weight reduction. That is the key," he said. “When you bring substantial upgrades, it's something that the track team will have to learn as quickly as possible. We have no winter testing where you can just do some runs, some back-to-backs and all that. It puts a lot of emphasis on the quality of your data, on the quality of understanding your simulations.

“But we do not expect that we get everything out of it in the first run tomorrow. I think we need to learn how to manage this and how to get the best out of it.

“We have a good track team, we have a good support team from home that will go through that quickly and we will get the right conclusions quickly. But it will take a bit of time. So the tests that we will have to do, basic tests – be it ride height, be it rakes and these kinds of things – will come over the next events.”

Krack would not be drawn on a firm figure in terms of lap time gain in Hungary, but says Aston Martin hopes to be racing with other cars having been comfortably adrift of the back of the field so far this year.

“The reason why we do this is to go racing – we have not been racing over the last events and this is what we need to return to," he said. "So now where we race in that big competitive field, we will see. This I can really not predict. But the key question is that we are back in the game, because we were not before.

“If we manage to fight for something, then we are back in the game – back racing – and have understood half or the first third of the character [of the new car], then I think it would have been a good weekend.”