Sage has several ways to factor polynomial expressions.
Defined as symbolic expressions living in the symbolic ring,
they factor as observed in the question.
It seems symbolic expressions in Sage are not able to hold
a factor if it is a constant. As observed in the answer by
@Emmanuel Charpentier, this is in contrast to Maxima.
To further illustrate that, consider the following example:
sage: a3, a6 = SR.var('a3, a6')
sage: q = (a3 - a6)
sage: p = x * q
sage: p
(a3 - a6)*x
sage: p.subs({x: 2})
2*a3 - 2*a6
There might or might not be a way to remedy that
for symbolic expressions.
Defined in a polynomial ring, such expressions will factor
differently though.
Define a polynomial ring over the integers:
sage: R.<a3, a6> = ZZ[]
sage: R
Multivariate Polynomial Ring in a3, a6 over Integer Ring
Define a polynomial in that ring:
sage: p = 2*a3 - 2*a6
sage: p
2*a3 - 2*a6
Factor it:
sage: p.factor()
2 * (a3 - a6)
Note that factoring in polynomials over the rationals would
work differently.
Just an information: I tried with Maxima (version 19.01.2x) itself (not in SageMath) and it factorizes correctly:
Enter: factor(2 * a3 - 2 * a6);
The output is: -2*(a6-a3)
Thanks for the reply! That's definitely strange. The answer below gave a few more instances of sage factoring like this.