Endless crisis
The ordeal of this start of the season for Honda continues. The Japanese engine manufacturer, which this year collaborates exclusively with the Aston Martin team, is undoubtedly the main loser of these first races. Neither in Australia nor in China did either of the two green cars manage to cross the finish line and it is undeniable that the main – if not exclusive – responsibility is to be attributed to the Japanese power units.
Read more Tesla prepares the Terafab project: Musk’s announcement
Yet, quite incredibly, in the post-race commentary released to the media by HRC chief engineer Shintaro Orihara a relatively positive reading of this weekend almost seems to emerge. Of course, some improvement was seen, but is it acceptable that a driver (Alonso in this case) is forced to retire from the race because “the vibrations made me lose feeling in my hands and feet“.
“We cannot be satisfied with the double retirement in today’s Chinese Grand Prix – Orihara stated – however, if we focus on the more positive aspects, we covered more kilometers than in Melbourne, which is encouraging. We also improved reliability throughout the sprint race weekend, but this is still not enough to complete the full race distance. We have improved vibrations at the systems level – the Japanese manager then added, and one might wonder what Alonso thinks about it – but this remains a problem for driver comfort. This is a fundamental aspect to address ahead of the next race in Japan. Regarding Lance’s retirement, we are currently investigating the root cause and will continue to work with HRC Sakura, along with Aston Martin, to understand what happened on the ninth lap. The 2026 regulations are anything but simple, as demonstrated by the number of retirements and non-starts today. We know this is no excuse for our reliability and performance, and we will strive to improve. We still have a lot of work to do, and this is our priority right now”.
