Honda warns Aston Martin fix will take time

Honda has admitted Aston Martin’s 2026 Formula 1 power-unit problems will take time to solve and are unlikely to be fixed before the Miami Grand Prix, leaving the team stuck at the bottom of the constructors’ championship after a pointless opening three races.

The scale of the problem goes beyond poor performance. Reports have linked Aston Martin’s disastrous start to severe vibrations from the Honda power unit that have been far worse on track than expected from dynamometer testing, repeatedly destroying batteries and even raising fears of possible permanent nerve damage in the hands of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll.

That has turned a difficult start into a technical crisis. Aston Martin is 11th and last in the standings with zero points, and the battery failures have become especially costly under Formula 1’s limits of two batteries per car for the season. At the Australian Grand Prix, two of the four batteries Honda brought failed within the first hour of practice.

The underlying issue is the way the vibration is being transmitted through the rigid connection between the engine, gearbox and MGU-K. According to the reports, the battery cannot tolerate those loads, and in some cases the damage is irreversible.

Shintaro Orihara, Honda’s trackside general manager and chief engineer, said in a video posted on social media that the work has continued despite the postponement of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia Grands Prix. “After the Japan Grand Prix, members of Aston Martin and the Honda Racing Corporation have been working together at the HRC Research and Development Center in Sakura, about three hours from Tokyo,” he said.

Orihara said Honda and Aston Martin are “working around the clock” and “without stopping” to improve their countermeasures before Miami, but he made clear there is no quick cure. “We understand it will take time to resolve [the issues], but we will continue to cooperate and work hard,” he said.

That matters because the reports suggest this is not a problem Honda can solve through the power unit alone. Aston Martin’s chassis design and overall integration strategy are also understood to require changes, making Miami more likely to be the next step in containment rather than the point at which the team fully escapes a failure that is already hurting reliability, drivability and its drivers’ physical condition.