Last Updated on March 29 2026, 8:50 pm
Aston Martin enjoyed a better weekend at the 2026 Formula One Japanese Grand Prix after failing to get even one of their cars to the finish over the opening two rounds of the season. Fernando Alonso brought his AMR26 home one lap down in P17, although in the sister car Lawrence stroll was less fortunate.
The Canadian son of team owner Lawrence Stroll was forced to retire on lap 11 with a water pressure problem after qualifying plumb last in P22. Lance’s weekend in Suzuka was a miserable affair as he struggled to find an optimum aerodynamic setup along with significant vibrations from his Honda power unit.
The Honda Racing Corporation has dropped the ball massively at the start of F1’s new powertrain regulatory era, having been handicapped by Honda Corporate who decided in 2021 they would be leaving F1.
Newey visits Honda in Sakura
With Red Bull then going it alone and building their own power unit (PU) for 2026, Honda decided to return to the sport in 2023 announcing a works team partnership with Aston Martin. Despite having some two and a half years to design and build their all new F1 PU a visit from Aston Martin’s technical guru, Adrian Newey along with Andy Cowell – then the team principal – they discovered on a visit to Sakura to their shock, their engine partner remained under staffed with just two months to go before the cars hit there track in January.
With Alarm bells ringing, Cowell resigned his role as team principal to work exclusively with Honda given his previous experience in project managing the all conquering 2014 Mercedes hybrid F1 PU Newey then stepped into the role as team boss, although doubts were expressed up and down the paddock whether he would do justice to the role.
Aston Martin were late to the Barcelona shakedown, only managing a few laps on day four of five by the time their car was assembled. It was not a good debut for the drivers nor the AMR26 as Lance Stroll managed just four laps on his single day in the car, although on day 5 Fernando Alonso accumulated a Grand Prix distance – although at a significantly reduced pace.
Newey throws Honda under the bus
At the season opener in Melbourne, Adrian Newey was accused by ex-F1 car designer Gary Anderson and Netflix narrator Will Buxton of throwing Honda “under the bus.” He claimed that the Honda power unit was the source of the vibrations and his chassis design merely the “receiver.” He further accused Honda of not knowing how bad the state of their F1 engine department was at the time they signed the deal to partner with Aston Martin.
Yet at the time I wrote here on TJ13 that sources in Aston Martin had informed us that in fact Newey’s chassis design was part of the problem. In fact it was claimed the suspension geometry was in fact amplifying the vibrations sourced in the PU.
Adrian Newey hasn’t been seen at a race weekend since th3e Melbourne opener, presumably chastened by the negative media response to the very public blame game he played. In Japan it was Honda’s turn to set the record straight and in typical diplomatic fashion Japanese fashion, the head of HRC attempted to suggest Newey’s comments had been a “misunderstanding.”
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Honda chief diplomatic over Newey tirade
The Aston Martin team boss claimed that just 30% of the Honda engineers who had designed and run the successful powertrains for Red Bull were left at HRC – suggesting some kind of negligence on HRC’s part. Koji Watanabe in Suzuka set out to clarify this matter: “I think that it’s a misunderstanding. Basically, our policy is to rotate the engineers of the motorsport regularly to mass production or more advanced technologies like jet or eVTOL or hydrology or something like that.
“So that is, we continue to rotate from the beginning. Probably my explanation is not enough. Also, of course, to rebuild the organisation took a bit of time, so that was his worry, I think. But now we have sufficient organisation and talent.”
Of course when Honda announced it was withdrawing from F1 in 2021 a number of their top engineers left for careers elsewhere in the sport. However, as Watanabe continued his press conference he sought to make it clear some of the responsibility for the vibrations lay with Aston Martin.
“On the [original] test on the dyno, the vibration [of the power unit] is acceptable level, but once we integrate in the actual chassis that vibration is getting much more than the test on the dyno,” revealed Watanabe. “Of course only PU cannot solve the problem, only the PU, so we are really closely together with Aston Martin Aramco to solve the problem, not only the power unit but also together with the chassis,” explained the Honda chief.
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Late to shakedown Aston Martin deprived Honda of testing time
Given how late Aston Martin were to Barcelona, a huge amount of running was lost to Honda. Whilst Mercedes completed over 500 laps, Aston Martin managed just around one tenth of that distance due to various chassis and PU issues and just one day’s full running available.
During the Bahrain test, Watanabe explains how Honda were able to improve the vibrations during their 6 days where they completed 200 laps of pre-season testing in Bahrain, but then with not ability to test there vibrations in a real life car, they were somewhat blinded when they arrived in Melbourne.
“We tried various countermeasures on the test bench, and brought one of those solutions to the opening race, where it showed some effect. By the second race, that effect had improved further. The so-called aggressiveness of the vibrations toward the battery has now been significantly reduced. It’s still not ideal, but we are no longer at a level where the battery is being damaged,” Watanabe revealed.
Yet his insistence that Honda cannot alone solve the problem does pain t to the fact their is a problem with the Newey designed AMR26. “I believe so. Enrico Cardile is currently working closely with us as well. This is not something that can be resolved by the power unit alone, so when it comes to vibration, we are tackling it together with a shared understanding of the issue,” concluded Watanabe.
Cardile left for Ferrari for Aston Martin and has been their Chief Technical Officer since August 2025. He is in effect Newey’s right hand man in the team and it is telling that Cardile is the point man for Honda and not Newey himself.
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A.J. Hunt is Senior Editor at TJ13 and a career journalist with experience in both print and digital sports media. Having trained in investigative journalism and contributed to several European sports outlets, Hunt brings rigour and polish to every article. His role is to sharpen analysis, check facts and ensure TJ13’s daily output meets the highest editorial standards.
