Aston Martin boss Andy Cowell has delivered an update on the team’s progress with Honda, as the two entities gear up for its forthcoming Formula 1 partnership for 2026.
The Silverstone-based squad is ditching its status as a Mercedes customer team and will become the sole user of Honda power units amid the start of F1’s new regulations next year.
Honda is returning to the sport in a full capacity for the first time since 2021, since handing operational duties of its engines to its previous customer Red Bull’s powertrains division.
The Honda Racing Corporation president, Koji Watanabe, recently stated that both parties are conducting “multiple tests” together, and has studied components in both Japan and the UK.
Cowell has provided further information on how progress is being made, telling F1’s official website that hardware tests have taken place, and indicated positivity on it.
“The work’s been going on for many, many months so the design of the Honda power unit is very much fitting hand in glove with the back of our monocoque and the front of our transmission,” he said.
“The hardware has been tested in Sakura [Honda’s power unit base in Japan] and our transmission has been tested here at Silverstone as well as on the back of the power unit in Sakura.
“There are daily meetings and then there are regular more senior level meetings to check in to make sure that we’re all working in the right direction.”
Cowell impressed by Aston Martin ‘enthusiasm’ with Honda
Cowell also said that the personnel at Silverstone are buoyant by the prospect of working with Honda, despite the difficulties the process is causing.
“It is a transformation going from a customer team to a works team at the same time as all the regulation changes and the new factory and all the new equipment,” he said.
“It’s a huge transformation for everybody in our team.
“But I’m really impressed with the enthusiasm that everybody’s got. Everybody wants to get to the front. Everybody wants to do well.
“Everybody’s open-minded to making changes in the way we work in responsibilities and so on. Everybody’s busy, everybody’s making lots of change, but it’s enjoyable change.”
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I wonder how things with Honda will change without Red Bull? When they rejoined F1 with McLaren, it was an all-Japanese team who worked on the project, with no outsiders or non-Japanese allowed in — even people from McLaren with experience from Mercedes and Ricardo (road car supplier) were rejected who had ideas for how to fix many of the problems. This is why they were producing such junk for McLaren, and why the relationship ended. When the McLaren-Honda relationship finally broke down in 2017, no one wanted to supply Red Bull with motors (after dragging Renault through the mud starting in 2014), and no one wanted to run Honda’s motors (probably the worst in F1 history), and both were at serious risk of leaving F1. Allegedly it was part of the Red Bull-Honda deal that Honda would have to receive input from Red Bull, and it was actually Ilmor (who between worked on Honda’s Indy motors between 2003 and 2011) that fixed or redesigned the Honda motor that Red Bull ended up winning with.
This is really the only aspect of Aston Martin that concerns me because I simply do not trust Honda as they have shown extreme incompetency in F1 since the 2000s (they once designed an entire car with a wind tunnel that was calibrated incorrectly, ruining the entire season, lol), otherwise AM are my pick for the next team to dominate F1.