Aston Martin pulled the plug on its Bahrain pre‑season test after completing just six laps on the final day. The AMR26, now powered by a Honda unit, has been the only team using the Japanese engine in the new era and has already logged the slowest benchmark of 1m35.974s. Persistent power‑unit glitches forced the garage to stay shut for hours, curtailing any meaningful running.

Wednesday saw the car spend four hours in the pit after a power‑unit fault, and when Lance Stroll finally hit the track on Thursday he spun into gravel, a mishap the team attributed to a technical fault rather than driver error. Fernando Alonso’s session was also cut short by a battery‑related issue, prompting Honda to run bench simulations in Sakura amid a power unit parts shortage.

With only a handful of laps logged, the AMR26 sits about 1.4 seconds off the pace of every competitor except newcomer Cadillac. Team ambassador Pedro de la Rosa admitted the programme was the sparsest of any outfit, but insisted the data gathered will shape development for the Australian Grand Prix. Aston Martin now heads to Melbourne with a clear target: close the performance gap before the season opener.