Some have noted the deja vu kind of feeling about Honda and another new set of Formula One engine regulations. Last time around they were late to the party – by a whole year – starting in 2015 whilst the rest of the field had a year’s running under their belts.
Despite another late start with Honda having initially pulled out of F1 in 2021, only to decide in 2023 to partner with Aston Martin in a works collaboration. Having won 72 races with Red Bull Racing together with six championships, Honda, with their advanced electronics division were expected to ace the all new 2026 power unit rules.
Yet 2 race weekends in, together with four Grand Prix starts, have not yet given up a finish for either Fernando Alonso or Lance Stroll. This is not merely deja vu, but Honda find themselves in a worse situation than in 2015 where, despite one of the McLaren cars failing to make the start, Jenson Button in the other finished the season opener in Melbourne. Neither he nor Fernando Alonso finished the second time out in Malaysia.
Aston Martin F1 progress
In search of small blessings, both Aston Martin drivers did finish the Sprint in China and ahead of the sole finishing Cadillac pilot, Sergio Perez. So there’s some small measure of performance which can be read from this result, but this coming weekend at Suzuka has the Honda executives already holding their collective heads in their hands.
Given the small amount of progress since Australia, Fernando Alonso believes the extra week in between China and the Japanese Grand Prix should benefit Aston Martin. “Obviously from Australia to China we only had five days, the engine was exactly the same as in Australia,” said the Spaniard after retiring his car in Shanghai.
“Now we have two weeks so we need more time in the dyno, we need to give Honda more time to understand the vibrations and where they come from. All in all we need to give Honda more time,” concluded the double world champion. Yet it takes 3-4 weeks from conception to producing an aerodynamic F1 upgrade. But in F1 engine-land matters are very different. The timescales are much longer and rather than attempting to redesign components contributing to the huge vibrations in the Honda engine, the Japanese engineers will be tweaking how to run the current unit in the most efficient manner possible.
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Honda running lower engine revs
Fernando Alonso revealed in Shanghai that Honda have been mitigating the battery vibrations by running their internal combustion engines at lower revolutions than the competition. This has been measured by their competitors who can see at the same points on track and in the same gear Aston Martin’s engines were revving lower than their own.
Lance Stroll retired from the Chinese Grand Prix with a battery issue and Fernando Alonso also finally gave up the ghost on lap 32 in Shanghai, reporting the excessive vibrations and demonstrating a loss of feeling in his hands visible of the cockpit camera.
According to Honda’s trackside general manager, Shintaro Orihara, “we have improved the vibrations on the systems side, but it’s still an issue for driver comfort. This is a key area to address as we look ahead to the next race in Japan.”
This was clearly; y the case given Alosno reported early in the Grand Prix that, “vibrations are higher today than yesterday,” and that he would brake gently to ensure he didn’t put temperature into the front axle. This would suggest the issue is not with Honda’s harvesting function, given this is performed at the rear of the car.
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A lap down, Fernando took the decision to retire the car, even though it appeared there was some push back from the team initially. The indictment of Honda being both slow and unreliable was not one Aston Martin’s trackside director accepted.
Mike Krack later revealed, “if you’re fighting for the win, it is possible to drive [the Honda quicker]“ but obviously as this was not the case “it was a decision that was quite easy to make. Obviously everybody is flat-out working on that [the vibrations],” said Krack.
Whilst their situation is desperate, Honda appear to believe the root of all their evils are the vibrations which they are beginning to understand. The question is whether the Japanese manufacturer can progress far enough for one of the Aston Martin flags to make the chequered flag on Sunday. That again would be progress indeed.
“If we go 10 days back, we were speaking about six laps. And then we found solutions to the problem. Especially for the most exposed point, which was the battery at that point,” observed Krack of the progress made. “It’s obviously not performance progress, we need to be honest with ourselves. But I think we have now a couple days more to work on that, and I’m quite sure that we will come up with further improvement.”
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FIA offer no early relief for Honda ‘catch-up’
When pressed on a timeframe for the final solution, the Aston Martin trackside director was more cautious. “To give you a final timeline on when, it’s very difficult to say. Ideally, you solve it. But this is something we have to do together with our partner Honda, to see really what we can do, in what timeframe.”
Adrian Newey’s calamitous explanation of the state of the Honda engine in Australia has led both the team and Aston Martin to appeal to the FIA to allow the Japanese manufacturer an early opportunity to take advantage of the ADOU catch-up programme.
Writing for Autosport Japan, Andrew Garrison suggests the FIA’s view is that Newey was laying it on thick over Honda’s plight in order to get early access to the ADOU concessions.“Adrian Newey appeared to exaggerate Honda’s problems in Melbourne in an attempt to get ADUO applied sooner, but this was largely ignored and the FIA gave no immediate indication that it would approve ADUO for Honda.”
However, the first opportunity for a manufacturer to access the catch-up programme is after race six, which was scheduled for Miami. However, with the cancelation of Bahrain and Saudi Grand Prix’s the FIA will have to address the issue thrown up by the working of the regulations.
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Will Mercedes allow a genuine title race between Antonelli and Russell? – Last time out in China, Formula One broke a twenty year drought in that the Italian national anthem was blaring out for a winning driver. It had been two decades since Giancarlo Fisichella took on the top step of the podium for Renault after the 2006 Malaysian Grand Prix.
It was the year Fernando Alonso was to win the second of his back to back drivers’ titles. The Spaniard was just twenty four years of age at the time and the executive in charge of Ferrari was a certain Luce De Montezemolo. The Scuderia had been dominant for six long years from 1999-2004 as Montezemolo had built a winning machine in the recruitment of Jean Todt, Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher…. CONTINUE READING
A.J. Hunt is Senior Editor at TJ13, where Andrew oversees editorial standards and contributes to the site’s Formula 1 coverage. A career journalist with experience in both print and digital sports media, Andrew trained in investigative journalism and has written for a range of European sports outlets.
At TJ13, Andrew plays a central role in shaping the site’s output, working across breaking news, analysis, and long-form features. Andrew’s responsibilities include fact-checking, refining editorial structure, and ensuring consistency in reporting across a fast-moving news cycle.
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