Aston Martin struggles: BBC’s Andrew Benson points to chassis as main weakness. BBC F1 reporter Andrew Benson reveals that more than half of Aston Martin’s performance gap to the leaders is due to chassis issues.

Benson (BBC): over half of Aston Martin’s gap to the leaders comes from the chassis

A shocking start to the season

Honda and Aston Martin had dreamed of a very different Japanese Grand Prix – the home race for the Japanese engine supplier – but the start of the partnership between the Japanese giant and Lawrence Stroll’s team has presented higher-than-expected obstacles.

At the moment, the Aston Martin AMR26 is the slowest car on the starting grid, even behind Cadillac. During the team principals’ press conference, Honda HRC boss Koji Watanabe stressed that, in terms of chassis performance, Aston Martin is just as responsible as the Honda power unit for the AMR26’s lack of competitiveness.

Benson points to the chassis deficit

Andrew Benson, the BBC’s Formula 1 reporter covering the Grand Prix, responding to questions from fans, highlighted that the chassis deficit actually outweighs the power unit issue: “Over half of Aston Martin’s gap to the leaders was due to the chassis. This was confirmed to me by a highly experienced and authoritative figure over the Suzuka weekend,” Andrew Benson explained. “This aligns with what other teams observed through GPS data regarding car speeds across different sections of the circuit, data that is accessible to all teams. Determining a clear split is still complicated because engine behavior can influence cornering performance.”

“There has been a lot of discussion about vibrations,” Andrew Benson continued, “but are they an intrinsic factor of the engine, or is it the chassis amplifying them? Adrian Newey himself admitted in Australia that the car had deficiencies and that, in terms of chassis performance, it was probably the fifth-strongest car on track. Essentially, if a Mercedes power unit were mounted under the hood of the Aston Martin, it would likely compete with Alpine and Haas. The AMR26 is certainly overweight and particularly struggles in high-speed corners.”

The early stages of the Aston Martin-Honda partnership have exposed deep-seated technical issues within the AMR26 chassis that transcend simple engine integration. By acknowledging that more than half of their deficit comes from the car’s physical architecture, the team has identified a massive mountain to climb in the 2026 development race. Whether the engineering team at Silverstone can rectify these aerodynamic and weight-related flaws before the season is lost will determine if the Stroll-led project can truly transition from a midfield dweller to a championship contender.