Aston Martin has moved to change the messaging after team boss Adrian Newey’s frank admission that his drivers are likely to be limited to 25 laps of running in the Australian Grand Prix.
Vibrations from the new Honda power unit had been said to be damaging not just to the hybrid system but also to the car and its occupant, to the extent that the drivers risked long-term health issues if they spent too long at the wheel.
Newey said Fernando Alonso had put that figure at 25 laps, but Alonso himself applied further nuance.
“It’s not painful. It’s not difficult to control the car,” he said. “The adrenaline is just way higher than any pain. If we were fighting for the win, we can do three hours in the car. Let’s be clear.
“I think that overcomes anything when you are in the car. You don’t have a limitation that will stop you from feeling the car or what you’re doing. Definitely it is something that is unusual.
“It shouldn’t be there. We don’t know the consequences either if you keep driving like that for months. A solution has to be implemented.”
Adrian Newey, Aston Martin Racing
Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images
What’s clear is that the team is putting a great deal of energy into softening the impact of Newey’s revelation, and managing what is now a diplomatically sensitive situation with its new engine partner. Expectations had been high given Honda’s recent run of success with Red Bull, combined with Newey’s arrival last year as managing technical partner.
He is now the de facto team principal as well after former boss Andy Cowell was sidelined into a liaison role with Honda.
But the reality has been a painful pre-season testing phase in which the AMR26 car arrived late and proved to be slow – and capable of only a handful of laps at a time without breaking down. At first this was explained as engine vibrations causing the unusually configured two-element energy store, which is integrated into the chassis, to fail.
The revelation that short stints were required to avoid the drivers incurring nerve damage naturally made headline news – and more potential embarrassment for Honda.
Aston Martin is now making a concerted effort to protect the relationship with its new engine partner rather than allowing it to take the same path as Honda’s ill-fated return to F1 with McLaren in 2015, an arrangement which fell apart amidst much mutual recrimination.
Back then, Alonso threw one of the most damaging grenades when he described Honda’s PU as a “GP2 engine”. It’s significant, therefore, that now his tone is much more diplomatic.
Fernando Alonso, McLaren MP4-30 Honda
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
“The vibrations coming from the engine are hurting a little bit the components in the car,” said Alonso. “The drivers, we feel our body with this frequency of the vibrations that you feel after 20 or 25 minutes.
“A little bit numb, I think is the word, on your hands or your feet or whatever.
“It has been a challenge, but every day in Sakura [Honda’s R&D base] they try to find solutions. I think since Bahrain there were a couple of tests done.
“Some of the solutions are implemented on the car now. I have 100% faith that Honda will fix the problems because they did it already in the past. They will always be competitive and a top engine in Formula 1.”
It’s understood, though, that while the solutions evaluated on the dyno have made the energy store more robust, the internal combustion engine itself still cannot achieve maximum revs, and the fundamental issue of vibrations has yet to be identified at source.
So the team’s attempt to manage the message, while understandable, may simply be deferring the problem of bad news to another day.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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