Hold onto your race suits, F1 fans—because while the grid is packing up for summer vacation, one team is pulling a stunning U-turn and heading straight back to the track.
Aston Martin is staying behind in Hungary to secretly run a brand-new Honda engine days before the official summer shutdown. According to Honda, the upgraded power unit will fire up for the first time during a filming day at the Hungaroring on Wednesday, July 29.
The move comes way earlier than expected. Originally, the plan was to debut the upgraded PU at the Dutch Grand Prix in late August. But now, sources confirm the team and Honda are fast-tracking a test session with the new spec engine bolted into Adrian Newey’s revised AMR26 chassis.
It all follows a Hungarian Grand Prix where Aston Martin finally showed signs of life. While Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso finished outside the points in P13 and P14, the squad’s major upgrades package—designed by Newey himself—gave the team its best result of the season so far. That progress apparently convinced Honda to roll out its next step earlier than scheduled.
“In Hungary, we have been supporting the team with the power unit integration,” said Shintaro Orihara, Honda’s trackside general manager and chief engineer. “We will now take the important step of introducing our new-spec power unit in the Netherlands.”
But first comes that crucial filming day. “Before then, during Wednesday’s filming day, we will run the new engine in the AMR26 for the first time, before the summer shutdown commences,” Orihara added.
The summer break will give the entire paddock a three-week breather. But Aston Martin and Honda won’t truly know if their combo works until the high-pressure sprint weekend at Zandvoort, starting August 21. That’s when the upgraded chassis and the new engine have to prove themselves under real race conditions.
So while other teams are packing swim trunks, Aston Martin is packing data sheets and a whole lot of curiosity. Will this early engine test be the secret weapon that flips their season upside down—or just a quiet run nobody talks about after the break?
