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Inside the Aston-Honda crisis
Among Ferrari fans – who have been waiting since way back in 2008 to win a World title – the phrase “we’ll win next year” has become a kind of ironic and bitter mantra. But this time, this concept is even more attributable to the green cars of the Aston Martin team than to the red ones. The Silverstone-based team, in partnership with Honda, was supposed to be one of the main protagonists of this season; instead, the start of the new regulatory cycle has been a disaster across the board for the team owned by Lawrence Stroll. The AMR26 is full of problems, but there is no doubt that a large component of the performance deficit also comes from the Japanese power unit, unreliable and enormously underperforming compared to the competition.
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In these weeks of break from track activity, everyone’s focus is on the effects that the ADUO – the regulatory mechanism introduced by the FIA to offer a chance of recovery to engine manufacturers who find themselves at a clear disadvantage compared to the competition – could have on the remainder of the championship. Colleagues from the Spanish newspaper Marca, very attentive to what happens at Aston Martin given Fernando Alonso’s presence in the team, have estimated the performance gap between the Japanese PU and the Mercedes one, the benchmark for the entire grid at the start of this season, to be as much as a good 5%. To get an idea of the enormity of this gap, just consider that the gap brackets provided by the ADUO for the allocation of additional resources to those who had to catch up were 2 and 4%.
Between Silverstone and 2027
With the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian races, the first improvements to the power units should be allowed in the Monaco GP, the sixth round of this championship. Honda, however, according to what has been suggested by the Spanish media, should be able to present its upgraded engine thanks to the ADUO ‘concessions’ only at Aston Martin’s home GP, at Silverstone. Given the enormous performance deficit that Honda pays compared to the competition, however, it is difficult to imagine that these improvements, however effective, could overturn the performance of the British team.
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As already suggested by Aston Martin team principal Adrian Newey in the first press conference of the year in Australia, it cannot be ruled out that the majority of resources and efforts are already being directed towards 2027, avoiding ‘wasting’ them on a project that can only be patched up and with little chance of achieving tangible results. The goal could therefore be to completely overhaul the power unit, in the hope of starting the next World Championship more ‘in touch’ with the rest of the starting grid.
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