Aston Martin’s development “burden” hitting its fight for points in 2025

Aston Martin is a long way off the promise it showed in past years, with the team scoring just 10 points over the first four races of the 2025 Formula 1 season.

Now it’s emerged that juggling upgrades, getting to grips with the complex 2026 aero regulations and developing a new gearbox in house are all hitting the team’s results this year.

Just two years ago, Aston Martin and driver Fernando Alonso were regulars on the F1 podium, and many were counting down the days until the Spaniard could pick up his 33rd race win. Now, Alonso has yet to score a point and team-mate Lance Stroll has only managed a best finish of sixth.

Mike Krack, Aston Martin’s chief trackside officer, now says that the side’s early struggles in 2025 haven’t been helped by the “double burden” that it faces in preparing for Formula 1’s new rules coming into force next year.

“We are also in a bit of a special case, we will change our engine manufacturer and we make our own gearbox [in 2026],” Krack told reporters after this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix. “That’s all not helping, so we have to balance these things.”

As part of the team’s move away from Mercedes power units from 2026, the British outfit will become responsible for the gearboxes that it pairs with the new Honda powertrains it will run in the upcoming season. Developing these components is a huge undertaking for the team, which has had a customer relationship with Mercedes since back in 2009 when it raced as Force India.

The complexities are compounded under Formula 1’s budget cap, which is leaving teams like Aston scrambling with where best to deploy resources.

“We have the ‘26 regulations coming, we have a couple more races with these regulations and it doesn’t help to stir in that now and to find out what went right and what went wrong,” Krack adds.

“We are still working on the development, when there is something ready then we’ll bring it.”

Krack and his team are facing an uphill battle as it fights for every point it can manage, especially after rivals Alpine showed promise on Sunday with Pierre Gasly picking up 10 points for the French side.

It’s for that reason that Krack says Aston must get out of its current slump “as quick as possible” and try and turn things around.