Lance Stroll, driver at Aston Martin

The poignant question no one at Aston Martin seems to have the answer to

18:52, 14 Aug

byNorberto Mujica

Aston Martin are charged with a tough ask: to become Formula One world championship material. Nevertheless, with the 2026 F1 campaign fast approaching they remain answerless to core question regarding their current car, the AMR25.

In Spa, both Aston Martin cars driven by Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll fell out of the Sprint qualifying in the last places in Q2, only to repeat the same feat for Sunday's race, only this time, in Q1.

In fact, during the Grand Prix, Stroll finished only P14 with his Spaniard teammate three places back in P17.

Fast track one week later and both Aston Martin's are in Q3 in P5 and P6, and during the race Alonso managed to hang on to that top-five result, with teammate Stroll sealing a top-seven for the Silverstone-based outfit.

Fernando Alonso drives the AMR25 at the Hungaroring

The million dollar question: Where did Aston Martin's overturn of Spa come from?

"From the first lap of FP1 to the last lap of the race the car was in a nice window, so it was good," said Stroll after the Hungarian GP.

Uplifting words. Or at least they very well ought to be, if Aston Martin understood exactly why they were so uncompetitive in Spa, and why it was entirely the opposite case in Hungary just one week later.

"I think there's lots to learn from this weekend to understand. Because I think we don't fully understand why we're competitive this week and we were last last week.

"We need to try and learn what we can from this week and put the car in that window in more places, because we want to be at this level of competitiveness more weekends," concluded the Canadian driver.