Honda’s Trackside General Manager Shintaro Orihara has exercised caution and lowered expectations for signs of immediate progress for Aston Martin when Formula 1 returns this weekend in Miami.
The Japanese marque and the Silverstone-based squad have been working non-stop in the sport’s enforced five-week break to ensure it is making headway after a catastrophic start to the new season.
With reliability issues, coupled with overwhelming and unbearable vibrations within the AMR26 via the power unit, the team has managed just one race finish in four races, China’s Sprint included.
Orihara recently issued an update the “countermeasures” it implemented to lessen the vibrations ahead of Suzuka were being ‘enhanced’, to provide Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll the best possible opportunity of moving up the grid.
But Orihara, ahead of this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, issued a low bar in terms of immediately seeing noticeable improvement.
“It has been a long but intense period between the races with lots of work happening in collaboration with the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team both in Japan and in the UK,” he said.
“The Japanese Grand Prix showed that the work is going in the right direction and helped us to find the motivation to keep pushing forward.
“After that race, we took the opportunity to keep one of the AMR26 cars on site for further static testing in Sakura for the first time, focusing our efforts on reducing the vibrations and thus increasing reliability.
“We have made some progress, allowing us to implement further countermeasures in Miami and later in the season. Realistically, this progress will not have a visible impact on the power unit performance on track, so we shouldn’t be expecting big jumps forward here.”
How Aston Martin and Honda will approach F1’s ‘refinements’ in Miami Sprint weekend
F1 is, of course, returning with a myriad of “refinements” to its controversial new regulations cycle and it comes at a particularly tricky weekend for teams, as Miami is the second Sprint weekend of the season.
To give teams some additional help, FP1 has been extended to an hour-and-a-half, and Orihara explained how Honda will approach the weekend.
“Miami is the first circuit on the 2026 calendar with lots of slow speed corners,” he said.
“It is a unique track, having two long open-throttle sections, and several slow speed corners. This combination makes it interesting to find the car setting compromise.
“On the power unit side, it’s about improving driveability through the slow speed sector and optimising energy management in this section is a key factor to maximise performance.
“Miami is also the first warm race weekend of the season so it’s paramount to keep the power unit temperatures under control under these new regulations.
“The Miami Grand Prix is a Sprint weekend which means we only have one practice session – albeit 90 minutes – to optimise all of the data settings under the new regulations and define the best cooling specifications ahead of Sprint qualifying, which makes FP1 here very important.”
Honda will no doubt be eager to show its improvements are working to satisfy its Aston partners, but there is no doubt that it is – no pun intended – a marathon, not a sprint.
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