Aston Martin recovered from its early reliability drama to begin putting some laps on its AMR26 car on the final day of this week’s Formula 1 test at Barcelona on Friday.
The Silverstone-based squad had only managed to get its 2026 F1 car out on track for the final hour of the penultimate day on Thursday, with Lance Stroll (above) then stopping on track after just four slow laps.
But whatever the issue was it seems to have been resolved, with Fernando Alonso getting some early laps in on Friday morning at a pace slightly more representative of proper running than Stroll managed on Thursday.
As he completed a number of short runs, Alonso got down to a 1m22.889s best in early running, more than 20 seconds faster than Stroll was allowed to go on Thursday.
Aston Martin is not the only team that is back in action on Friday after getting on top of reliability niggles.
McLaren has resolved the fuel system issue that kept Oscar Piastri in the pits on Thursday afternoon. The team’s MCL40 was back running straight away on Friday morning, with the Australian driver back at the wheel.
Full list of who's running when at Barcelona
Haas was also running again after the two stoppages that Ollie Bearman suffered on Wednesday. The British driver will run on Friday morning with team-mate Esteban Ocon taking over in the afternoon.
Red Bull was also back in action since its running was interrupted by Isack Hadjar’s hefty crash in the final moments of Tuesday.
Spare parts were flown out from its Milton Keynes factory on Thursday and, after being fitted to the car, Max Verstappen was out running early on Friday.
Cadillac, Audi, Alpine, and Ferrari are also joining the final day of testing this week, with conditions expected to remain dry throughout.
Mercedes and Red Bull will be absent from the last day of action because they have already completed their maximum allowance of running for three days of the five-day test.
