Aston Martin "lost testing", claims Will Buxton after AMR26 struggles in Bahrain

Former F1 TV presenter Will Buxton claimed Aston Martin "lost testing" after the Silverstone outfit struggled in Bahrain. 

Aston Martin has already had a tricky start to the season after arriving in Bahrain for pre-season testing off the pace. Lance Stroll claimed that the AMR26, which is the first Aston Martin F1 car to be designed under the leadership of Adrian Newey and with the Honda powertrain, was four seconds off the pace.

"Who's lost testing? Well, DC [David Coulthard] picked it up at the start. Aston Martin. Horrible pre-season test," Buxton said on the Up To Speed podcast. "I mean, this was supposed to be the car, right? The Adrian Newey car. No expense spared. Honda coming back to the sport, sort of full-time. And it's the Honda engine that is the massive woe.

"And if we look back to the last time there was a big engine regulation change, Honda were with McLaren. They got it completely wrong, and it appears that they are massively... not just off the pace, but with an engine that is unreliable and on the last day of testing, they only got six laps in."

Co-host and former F1 driver Coulthard added: "It's very difficult when you've got a down-on-power engine to actually know how good the car is. They've all got the same tyres. So, the best car clearly takes those tyres to a higher limit. There's more energy going into those tyres.

"But if you've got the downforce, then there's less sliding, and you take the potential. So, there's no guarantee that, let's say Honda fixes the problem like that, and they suddenly have the same power. Maybe that'll bring the Aston Martin car into a window where it doesn't work. So I don't think it's as simple as saying Adrian and his team have done a great job and Honda boohoo. You know the two have to work together.

Lance Stroll, Aston Martin Racing

Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images

"What is really surprising is Honda's come back to Formula 1, which might confuse some of our new listeners because Honda were still supplying engines to Red Bull last year, but the point of that was they decided to pull out of Formula 1, and it was scheduled that their last year would be last year.

"And six months later, Lawrence Stroll presumably managed to persuade them to redesign a new engine for the new regulations, but they'd switched the programme off and then they had to gear it all back up again.

"In the meantime, they've lost engineers and designers to other manufacturers. And it clearly shows brain power is not something that you can just do with headcount. You've got to have people with experience."