What Aston Martin has identified as its chief problem

Aston Martin's hospitality unit was a hive of activity on Thursday morning as Team Principal Adrian Newey and Honda Racing President Koji Watanabe faced the media for the first time since the British team's 2026 car suffered significant vibrations that limited their running in pre-season testing.

It's been a tough start to the year for Aston Martin, who are heading into this season with a works power unit partner for the first time in their history in the shape of Honda. They were late to the Barcelona Shakedown, after delays early in the process pushed their production deadlines back and then achieved the least mileage of any of the 11 teams on this year's grid during two three-day tests in Bahrain.

Troubles are to be expected when you bring on a new partner as significant as an engine supplier, especially when you're working to new rules and producing your own gearbox and rear suspension for the first time – but Aston Martin, who tempted design genius Newey away from Red Bull last March, didn't expect it to be so tough.

The chief problem in Bahrain was a big vibration from the power unit that damaged Honda's battery to a point where they couldn't run it for very long before it broke. The vibrations were also so severe, parts of the car were breaking and tough for the drivers to handle.

Aston Martin are aware of the challenge they are facing – but they are not turning from a fight. They have been working hard together with Honda to try and find a solution ahead of this weekend's season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

As we learned in the briefing, while Honda haven't found the root cause of the problem, they do have a countermeasure to try in Melbourne as an interim solution to try and get some longer life out of the battery.

"Based on the extensive dyno testing, we will introduce countermeasures we believe to be the most effective solution at this stage, starting this week," said Watanabe. "However, its effectiveness we cannot yet fully guarantee under the real track condition, so certain conditions will be applied to power unit operation this week.

"We are working together as one team and further measures are already under consideration but we are not able to share that technical detail, so we ask for your patience as we continue working toward unlocking full performance potential."

Newey added: "The important thing to understand, though, is that the battery is the thing that we have been focusing on because that's the critical item.

"Without giving away any technical details, what we have achieved for this weekend, it tested on the dyno over the course of the weekend and got to the solution which we will be using here at Melbourne.

"That has successfully significantly reduced the vibration going into the battery but what is important to remember is, effectively the PU, the combination of the ICE and possibly the MGU as well, is the source of the vibration. It's the amplifier. The chassis is – in that scenario – the receiver.

"That vibration into the chassis is causing a few reliability problems, mirrors falling off, tail lights falling off, all that sort of thing, which we are having to address."

However, Newey said the "much more significant problem" is the vibration is "transmitted ultimately into the driver's fingers", which has until this weekend limited the amount of laps they can run.

"Fernando [Alonso] is of the feeling that he can't do more than 25 laps consecutively before he will risk permanent nerve damage to his hands," he added. "Lance [Stroll] is of the opinion that he can't do more than 15 laps before that threshold.

"To me I think there's no point in not being open and honest on our expectations. We are going to have to be very heavily restricted on how many laps we do in the race until we get on top of the source of the vibration and improve the vibration at source."

Such is the quality of Aston Martin and Honda's facilities and personnel at Silverstone, UK, and Sakura, Japan, the squad retain hope they can get on top of their problems.

Newey said: "Do we believe in Honda's ability to bring that power up and to be competitive? Absolutely, they have a proven track record, and we have total faith."

Watanabe added: "Of course, I want to hurry up, but at this moment, it's quite difficult to say when and how [long it will take]."

'The car has huge, tremendous development potential in it'

Intriguingly, Newey feels there's huge potential in the chassis, so much so that he reckons it's good enough to be top of the midfield currently with plenty of options to add performance through the season.

"On the chassis side, I think it is well known that we faced a very condensed period of development," he said. "We didn't get a model into the wind tunnel until mid-April – so quite a long way behind our competitors.

"What we tried to concentrate on was having a good, sound, architectural package. By architectural package, I mean the parts that we can't easily change in season. I think we've achieved that.

"I look at our package and I don't feel as if we've particularly missed anything so therefore I believe that the car has huge, tremendous development potential in it. It will take a few races to fully realise that potential. We've got quite an aggressive development plan underway.

"Here in Melbourne, we are a bit behind the leaders [and] maybe the fifth best team, so sort of potential Q3 qualifiers on the chassis side. Obviously it is not where we want to be but we have the potential to be up front at some point in the season."

For their part, the drivers were staying optimistic that things will improve in the future.

"We’re not happy for sure," said Stroll. "We want to be more competitive but all we can do is put our heads down and just get on top of the issues we have and try to improve every weekend through the season.

"I have no doubts that on the chassis side, we can bring upgrades and get more competitive every week. On the engine side, the same – we just need to find more power and when all of the pieces come together, I’m sure we can be where we want to be. It’s just about getting there."

Alonso added: "You have to keep united, you have to keep motivated. Sometimes it's difficult when you are not really fighting for top places but there is always a goal.

"There is always a challenge, always a target on the weekend and for us now it's just to get better, to improve the car, to understand more about these issues that we have.

"At the same time, because we had a very short winter and we didn't manage all the programmes that we wanted, there are a lot of set-up directions and tests that we want to do in these first races to understand the car and the new regulations. I think we have a long list to do and that's already motivating enough for the first couple of races."

The first opportunity to see how much progress the team have made will be first practice, when Honda's countermeasures are put into action on track.

If it works, in theory the battery should be able to run for longer, which in turn will allow the team to gather more valuable data about the power unit and car having missed out on so much running in Bahrain – and further understand what is causing the vibration to help them get to the root cause.