Aston Martin, what a disaster!
As soon as it arrived at the Barcelona shakedown, a couple of days later than the competition, the Aston Martin seemed as if it had landed from Mars due to the sophistication of some of the technical choices of the genius Adrian Newey. Then, in the Bahrain tests, reality showed how that apparently small delay on the schedule hid huge and difficult-to-solve problems: the fault of the new gearbox, which the Silverstone team is building in-house for the first time (previously it purchased it from Mercedes along with the power unit), but also of the integration with the new V6 Honda engine for F1. Indeed, the Japanese manufacturer itself ended up in the dock, in a script that seems not too different from the one already seen starting from 2015, in the years of the very difficult debut in F1 of the hybrid era with McLaren.
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The Honda F1 press conference
Precisely to respond to the criticism, in recent days the leaders of Honda HRC (the sporting division of the Tokyo company) held a press conference in Japan. “Speaking quite frankly – explains president Koji Watanabe to Motorsport.com – pre-season testing was extremely tough for us. We were not able to reach the level of performance we had anticipated and the presence of a complex set of problems became evident. These tests were a very important part of the process in terms of visualizing the problems and now our engineers and mechanics are working day and night, more closely than ever with the team, to allow us to improve. We are also having quite frank discussions with Aston Martin as we work hard to find solutions to these problems. The climb is steep but we certainly do not back down from this challenge”.
The cause of the reliability problems
Beyond the issues related to the deficient performance of the new Honda F1 engine, one of the main themes is the poor reliability caused by unexpected vibrations (produced by the new gearbox?), which forced the team to complete very few laps on the last day of testing due to a lack of spare parts. “In Bahrain – adds executive director Ikuo Takeishi – we observed an abnormal level of vibrations, which we believe is the main cause of the damage to the battery pack. We are investigating the cause of these vibrations, both regarding the power unit but also regarding the car, and we want to take countermeasures. Specifically, we are currently working on the test bench in Sakura with the chassis, in order to analyze and study a solution against the vibrations. The battery pack was damaged by a combination of factors that occurred when the car took to the track”.
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“We are working with the team to solve these problems before the start of the season”, Takeishi then concluded. Despite the difficulties that are conditioning the start of the new F1 regulatory cycle for Honda and Aston Martin in a decidedly unexpected way, for the moment the leaders of the Japanese company remain confident: “There are some problems, but we will certainly aim for victory”.
