Fernando Alonso has continued to voice concerns over the Honda power unit powering the Aston Martin Formula 1 car.
Singapore posed another tough weekend for the Silverstone-based team, which has spent the new regulations at the back of the field.
Although the team have worked hard to improve the car for both Lance Stroll and Alonso, the results have been slow ot come. The Spaniard has been closest to results, narrowly missing Q2 in Singapore.
However, in race situations, the Aston Martin drivers have increasingly found themselves off the pace and frustrated.
After the race, Alonso said: “There is something on the power unit, yes, that is not performing as it should this weekend.”
“We need to understand why, because obviously there are a couple of tough races coming. Mexico will be the next one with very slow-speed corners. Maybe Vegas.
“We need to get on top of the issues: drivability, turbo lag. There are a couple of things that are costing us a lot of lap time, and we discovered them the hard way this weekend.”
The Spaniard was asked whether the issues were specific to Marina Bay and its unique characteristics or part of a larger problem with the Honda power unit.
“I don’t know. We need to see.” He admitted.
“In Sepang we had no issues, and even in Baku, Baku was very twisty and very slow, the first two sectors, and we didn’t have any issues. So it seems very specific to this track, and I don’t have any answers.”
Continued problems
It wasn’t just the driveability issues that plagued Aston Martin across the weekend, with Alonso struggling with his turbo. Both Aston Martins started from the pit lane, with the Spaniard having his turbo replaced.
“I still had a lot of problems in the race. I think less on the turbo side, but it was a lot of problems on deployment, especially after the virtual safety car.” He said.
“I don’t think the car knew exactly where I was in the lap because I was deploying in different places that I didn’t need, and I was not deploying on the straight, so it was a little bit frustrating.
“But yesterday the turbo was broken, so I had to change it.”
Alonso further clarified the issues. explaining they weren’t isolated to the Virtual Safety Cars.
He told the media, “No, all the laps were difficult.
“But here on the virtual, in the first one, I could have overtaken [Sergio] Perez, and I ended up not overtaking, but also losing the position with [Isack] Hadjar.
“Then in the last virtual as well, I lost like two seconds on the restart.
“The car was okay. Especially on the soft tyre, I think the first stint was very strong. But we ended up behind Checo, well, behind any car, and then we lost 200, 300 metres every straight. So it’s a little bit of an impossible task.”
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