Aston Martin’s pace deficit to the front of the Formula 1 field has been labelled “embarrassing” by Karun Chandhok.

The Silverstone-based squad has endured a nightmare start to the 2026 season and F1’s new era of rules despite huge promise and excitement surrounding the first Aston Martin to be designed by legendary tech guru Adrian Newey and an exclusive works’ engine partnership with Honda.

Aston Martin has found itself languishing at the back of the competitive order along with F1 newcomers Cadillac across the opening three rounds, while the team sits last in the constructors’ championship and is yet to score a point.

Fernando Alonso finished a lap down in 18th place at the Japanese Grand Prix as Aston Martin managed to complete a full race distance for the first time this year amid reliability issues that have beset the AMR26 challenger.

Aston Martin has been linked with a move for former Red Bull sporting director Jonathan Wheatley following his sudden exit from Audi but former-driver-turned pundit Chandhok believes the team principal role is the “least of the issues” facing the struggling outfit.

"It sounds like there's a bit of limbo. There are certainly some rumours around Aston Martin, between China and Japan. It just seemed like an obvious thing because Adrian was filling that role as a somewhat interim position,” Chandhok said on the Sky Sports F1 show podcast.

"But clearly it's not a done deal. If it was, it would have been announced. I think there's still a lot of movement going on in where Jonathan lands. What I'm fairly confident is that we haven't seen the last of Jonathan Wheatley in the paddock.

"He's an absolute paddock lifer. He's been there since the early '90s. He's not done with Formula 1. So, it won't be long before he reemerges, but I think the challenge is, will he now reemerge and find a position of seniority that he thinks is deserving of his recent past because he's now been team principal.

"It's quite hard to take a step down from that, isn't it? You've been in the top job, and there are only 11 of them on the grid. How does that work? Honestly though, Aston, they've got bigger problems than the team principal.

“They’ve been… Disappointing is not the word, is it? It's just been embarrassing how far off the pace that whole package has been due to the issues from the Honda side, of course.

"I think the team principal is the least of the issues. They need somebody to resolve the technical issue, and I don't think Jonathan's necessarily the person for that. They need engine people sitting in Sakura to try and dig them out of this hole."