David Coulthard reckons Aston Martin has hit rock bottom. Given the team sits tenth in the constructors’ championship with three measly points, all scraped together by one man, it would be hard to argue they’ve got much further to fall.
Speaking on the Up To Speed podcast ahead of the Italian Grand Prix, the 13-time grand prix winner drew a comparison to McLaren’s own dark period before Woking clawed its way back to consecutive constructors’ titles. The theory: Aston Martin is now living through its own version of that misery, and the only way from here is up.
A Season Gone Wrong
It’s worth remembering how much was promised. Aston Martin arrived in 2026 with a new Honda power unit partnership and its first car built entirely under Adrian Newey. Fans were told to expect a leap forward. Instead they got a car and engine package so troubled that the team needed a B-spec chassis at the Hungarian Grand Prix and a fresh round of engine upgrades at the Dutch Grand Prix just to stop the bleeding.
The results speak for themselves. Aston Martin has managed just three points all season, and every single one of them came from Alonso. His teammate Lance Stroll has yet to trouble the scorers at all. In the standings, that leaves Aston Martin ahead of only Cadillac, a team that hasn’t scored a point all year. That is not a comfortable place to be sitting with eleven races still to run.
Coulthard’s McLaren Comparison
Coulthard’s case rests on precedent. McLaren spent seasons wallowing before turning things around to win back-to-back constructors’ championships in 2024 and 2025, and he thinks Aston Martin, under Newey’s influence, is tracing a similar arc.
“There is a momentum change. They’ve hit rock bottom. If we remind ourselves of McLaren, what was it three seasons ago? They were pretty much at their rock bottom, and then they’ve bounced back to being world champions.” – David Coulthard
It’s a tidy narrative, and podcasts love a tidy narrative. But McLaren’s revival was built on years of methodical infrastructure investment and a driver line-up that could capitalise the moment the car turned competitive. Aston Martin, by contrast, is still trying to work out why its Honda engine doesn’t like being downshifted, as reported by Motorsport.com. That’s a rather more fundamental problem than simply needing more downforce.
Schiff’s More Measured Take
Naomi Schiff, the former W Series driver who co-hosts the podcast, was considerably more careful with her optimism. She pointed to the Dutch Grand Prix weekend as evidence of a team still finding its feet rather than one already climbing out of the hole.
“It’s a process of evolution at the moment for them, isn’t it? It’s all about learning. Zandvoort, the beginning of the weekend was looking a little like, ‘Oh, I guess we expected a little bit more from this,’ but it was a sprint weekend, so it’s a tough one to bring big upgrades and try to make changes and understand your package.” – Naomi Schiff
She also flagged the driveability complaints that both drivers raised about the upgraded Honda unit, a detail that has already been acknowledged by Honda itself, which admitted a driveability flaw in the upgraded engine ahead of the Italian Grand Prix. That’s not the sort of thing you fix with a wing tweak over a race weekend.
Alonso Carrying the Whole Operation
Schiff was right to single out Alonso’s ninth-place finish at Zandvoort as a genuinely impressive drive given the circumstances, with six retirements ahead of him including Max Verstappen. But leaning on a two-time champion to drag a struggling car into the points every other week isn’t a sustainable recovery plan, it’s a stopgap. Alonso is significantly behind his midfield rivals and still the only source of points on the entire team sheet.
“So you’ve got to give them some merit for that. I hope for them that it’ll continue moving forward because it’s been a bit of a bleak start.” – Naomi Schiff
Rock Bottom Is a Nice Story, Not a Guarantee
Calling something rock bottom implies there’s nowhere left to go but up. Aston Martin might well be right there, but plenty of teams have spent years bumping along the floor before anything changed. McLaren’s revival took serious time and resource before it translated into silverware, and Aston Martin is still working through engine driveability problems that Honda has openly admitted exist. Momentum is a lovely word for a podcast. Points on the board, ideally from both cars rather than just one, are what will actually tell us whether this recovery is real.
