.png){kind=small}
Relief is coming for Aston Martin, but not yet. Honda trackside general manager and chief engineer Shintaro Orihara has confirmed an upgraded power unit will arrive on the AMR26 at the Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort — two races after this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix. The timing matters enormously for a team that has spent the first half of 2026 scrapping with newcomer Cadillac at the very back of the field.
Orihara made the announcement in Honda's Belgian GP preview. "We have two more races before we introduce the new engine," he said. "It's important to keep learning with this current spec, so we can take those energy deployment findings into future races — like Monza, where we also have the long straights." Honda's power unit has been classified as the weakest on the grid under the ADUO — Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities — mechanism, which formally entitles it to exactly these kinds of upgrades.
The numbers underline how dire things have been. Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll qualified on the back row at Silverstone in both races, sitting more than a second behind the lead Cadillac and over two seconds shy of the Q2 cut-off. Alonso's solitary championship point this season came from Monaco, where he was running 14th with eight laps remaining before the race's chaos intervened. The championship standings tell a brutal story for the green cars.
Belgium and Hungary are expected to offer little respite before Zandvoort. Orihara flagged Spa's energy management demands as a particular challenge, noting that MGU-K harvesting on the long straights is "quite limited, even considering the circuit length" — adding reliability and weather uncertainty as further complications. Aston Martin has already shifted its primary focus toward its 2026 regulations car for 2027, with budget cap and aerodynamic testing restrictions ruling out any meaningful midfield recovery this season.