Aston Martin achieved the goal to "go back racing" with Hungarian Grand Prix upgrades

After a woeful start to their 2026 Formula 1 season, their first under Adrian Newey's watch and with Honda as power unit works partners, Aston Martin appear to have come out of the woods.

The team introduced what can only be called the B-spec AMR26 in Hungary, with Newey claiming there was another package on the way.

Fernando Alonso hailed the package as a "first step of good ones coming" and went on to qualify into Q2, P16, on merit. He finished 14th, with Lance Stroll in 13th, as the Green cars mixed it up with the midfielders for the first time, beating Cadillac, Williams, Haas, and the Alpine of Franco Colapinto in the process.

Krack declared the mission was accomplished after the Hungarian Grand Prix; he said: “I think we came here, and we said the main objective is to go back racing.

“I think we achieved that. The upgrade package works, and now we need to bring the next steps.

“The expectation was a lap time improvement or a percentage improvement,” he went on. “And you never know what the competition brings, so you cannot say, ‘I will be in front of this one, or I will be behind this one.’

“So in these situations you have to be factual and stick with the numbers. And then comes the competitivity that is obviously influenced by a lot of things.

“If you remember on Thursday, I said, ‘Where will [we] end up? We don't know.’ The midfield is so close that you cannot really say before.”

Krack also pointed out that upgrades were not enough without sorting out reliability issues, which prevented Aston Martin from finishing races earlier in the season with the AMR26 vibrating to pieces.

He added: “I think it's not a secret that we have had issues in the beginning of the year. And you don't only look at the performance development, but you also look at the reliability.

"Because no performance in the world will help you if the car breaks down, and you cannot develop your performance if the car breaks down.

“We said many times at the beginning of the year, the most important thing is that we finish races, that we learn driveability, shifting, energy management.

“And I think it is only [through] step-by-step learning that you can make the car reliable by fixing the issues that you're having," Krack maintained.

While the AMR26 will have another package of upgrades on the way, Aston Martin will be looking forward to the first race after the summer break in Zandvoort, where Honda will introduce their upgraded power unit.

Asked about the gains his team will have when the AMR26 becomes fully upgraded, chassis and power unit, Krack responded: "That's difficult to say. We will know in the next events if we find more performance or not.

"We lost a bit of time this weekend with Lance after the issue in FP1, so he didn't drive in FP2. So for sure we missed a bit of time to optimize everything.

“We take it from there, and we see what we can unlock in the next races. We have not driven much so far, so everything was new. We had issues, so we're trying to have a good look at the data.

"And then we see in Zandvoort if we can get more out of the package," Krack concluded. (Reporting by Agnes Carlier from Hungaroring)