Sky Sports Formula 1 lead commentator David Croft sympathises with Aston Martin team owner Lawrence Stroll after the Silverstone outfit had a rocky start with a disappointing pre-season testing in Bahrain. 

Aston Martin enters the 2026 F1 season with a new power unit partnership with Honda, Adrian Newey leading the team, and the first Aston Martin F1 car designed under his direction.

While anticipation was high for the team, pre-season testing was less than ideal, with driver Lance Stroll claiming they were four seconds off the pace.

"I think there's a lot of stress at Aston Martin and I don't say that lightly at all," Croft told Sky Sports F1. "And I feel for every single member of that team, and I feel for Lawrence Stroll as well, who has poured a lot of money and his heart and soul into that project and is feeling the pain massively.

"In Adrian Newey, they have the greatest designer of a racing car ever. But Adrian's not Harry Potter. He can't just wave a magic wand and suddenly deliver the best car on the grid. He started late, came late to the project.

"The wind tunnel wasn't online when he first started. The new sim wasn't online. Things were against him. And Honda has produced a power unit that is not up to scratch yet.

David Croft, Sky TV

"There's a lot of work going on in Japan. And Andy Cowell, who was the former team principal and CEO at Aston Martin, is spending a lot of time in Japan using his experience in Formula 1 power units. He was the man responsible for the Mercedes engine in 2014 to put things right.

"But it's not a quick fix. They leave Bahrain as the slowest team, and the most unreliable team, and that is not a position they should be in, but they were always playing catch-up.

"Honda, for instance, they were pulling out of the sport and then decided they were going to stay in the sport, but by the time they'd made that decision to stay, their F1 team had kind of scattered to the wind and had gone elsewhere.

"So, they had to start all over again, which meant that they were always on the back foot. And we've seen in the past, Honda start slow but then do make great strides forward. So I don't think all is lost at Aston Martin. But I do think that they could not have had it worse in testing if they had tried."

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