Alonso says Aston Martin vibration issue is gone

Fernando Alonso said Aston Martin’s season-defining vibration problem was effectively gone in Miami after Honda testing at Sakura, giving the team its first full sprint-and-grand-prix weekend of 2026 without major reliability trouble.

That matters because the issue had been crippling the Aston Martin-Honda package since pre-season testing and the opening round in Australia. Internally, the problem was taken seriously enough that Adrian Newey said Alonso and Lance Stroll had been at risk of “permanent nerve damage” in their hands because of the intensity of the vibrations.

Aston Martin’s response was unusually direct. Between Suzuka and Miami, the team left one AMR26 chassis in Japan for extensive work at Honda’s Sakura base so engineers could study the interaction between the car and the power unit under controlled conditions. Mike Krack, Aston Martin’s chief trackside officer, said that using the real race car was crucial to understanding how the vibration was being transmitted. “We left one of the race cars in Sakura for some dyno testing,” Krack said. “That allowed us to work on the interfaces and Honda on the source of the problem. I am very happy with the outcome.”

Alonso said the result was clear once the car ran in Miami. “Gone, I would say gone,” he told reporters. He said solving a problem like that was essential before the team could trust any next step on performance. “As long as you don't understand the problems and you don't fix one at a time, it is difficult to gain trust in the next steps of performance,” he said. “It was a relief to see the vibrations that we measured in Sakura are confirmed on track.”

Honda reached the same conclusion after the weekend. Shintaro Orihara, Honda trackside chief engineer, said the countermeasures from both the chassis side and the power-unit side had worked as intended. “We confirmed that they are working well. The drivers also gave positive comments,” Orihara said. “We completed the full race distance and also the sprint race distance without any major reliability issues. That is good progress.” He added that the next focus is now energy management, drivability and further power-unit improvement.

The breakthrough does not mean Aston Martin expects to move up the order quickly. Alonso said the team deliberately brought no performance upgrades to Miami, even as rivals introduced new parts, because fixing reliability had to come first. He backed that strategy on competitive and financial grounds, saying small gains would not change anything for a car currently running “P20 or P19” with “one second” to the next rival.

He said Aston Martin had already decided before Australia not to chase minor step-by-step upgrades in the first part of the season. “One or two tenths every race doesn't change our position,” Alonso said. Under the cost cap, he argued, “until we don't have one second and a half or two second improvement, it's better not to press the button in production because we waste money.”

So Miami gave Aston Martin something it had badly lacked all year: a stable base. The vibrations appear to be under control, both cars got through the weekend, and the team can finally gather usable data. But Alonso was clear that performance is a separate problem, and that the bigger gains are not expected until after the summer break.