De la Rosa admits Aston Martin has no upgrades coming as AMR26 stays rooted to the bottom

Aston Martin has no near-term relief in sight, team ambassador Pedro de la Rosa admitted at the Monaco Grand Prix on Friday, as the AMR26 finished both practice sessions as the slowest car on the shortest circuit of the 2026 Formula 1 season.

The team’s troubled switch from customer Mercedes power to a works Honda partnership has defined a miserable start to the new regulations era. The AMR26 was initially crippled by engine-generated vibrations that damaged batteries and left drivers with numbness in their limbs. While reliability has since improved, the car has received virtually no performance upgrades — a stark contrast to every rival on the grid — because the gap to the midfield remains too large to justify incremental development.

At Monaco, Fernando Alonso again described the car as suffering from “chronic understeer”. Cadillac, the next-slowest team, was 0.178 seconds clear of Aston Martin in practice, while Racing Bulls held a 0.546-second advantage — and that was on a circuit where lap times are compressed more than anywhere else on the calendar.

Asked in Friday’s FIA press conference whether the team could see light at the end of the tunnel, de la Rosa was unambiguous. “Definitely not yet,” he said. “We are where we are. It’s a difficult start, especially because we are in a position that we were not expecting to be in.”

De la Rosa acknowledged the toll the situation is taking on the drivers, who must face repeated questions about the same known problems at every race weekend. “Drivers especially, because they have to drive the car, they have to face the media, they have to explain every race what’s going on — very similar questions to known problems,” he said. “And we know that in the next few races we have no upgrades. However, we can see the upgrades coming, but they’re far away.”

He was careful to credit the effort being made across the organisation — in the simulator, at the factory, and within the race team — but conceded that hard work alone cannot mask the scale of the challenge. “When you’re not where you are expecting, or you are not where you want to be, it is always more complicated,” he added.

Alonso’s Friday was further complicated by a minor accident, described as symptomatic of the AMR26’s ongoing driveability issues, underlining that the team’s problems extend beyond raw pace alone. With no upgrades scheduled for the coming races and the works Honda partnership still finding its feet, Aston Martin’s 2026 season looks set to remain difficult well into the summer.