Aston Martin chief Adrian Newey has suggested it’s unlikely that either of the team’s cars will be able to finish Sunday’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix due to concerns that vibrations from the steering wheel could cause serious damage to their drivers.It had become clear during last month’s two pre-season testing events in Bahrain that the team were experiencing major issues with their Honda power unit, the first supplied to them in a new partnership for 2026 with the Japanese manufacturer.
The extent of the issues were laid bare on Thursday morning as Newey held a press conference with Honda executive Koji Watanabe in Melbourne, at which they revealed the power unit’s vibration problem was not only impacting the functionality of the car but also the safety of drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll in Sunday’s 58-lap race.
Newey said: “Fernando is of the feeling that he can’t do more than 25 laps consecutively before he will risk permanent nerve damage to his hands. Lance is of the opinion that he can’t do more than 15 laps before that threshold.”I think there’s no point in (not) being open and honest in this meeting (press conference) on our expectations. It’s something that unfortunately Koji and I haven’t had a chance to discuss properly prior to this meeting.
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Alonso says he has experienced numbness from the vibrations of the Aston Martin
“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.”
Along with concern for the drivers, Watanabe confirmed that Honda are also unable to run the power unit at full capacity due to the vibration issue.
Watanabe said: “During the Bahrain pre-season test, we experienced unexpected vibration, which caused damage to battery-related components of the power unit. As a result, we were unable to complete the mileage we had originally targeted.”The engineers from Honda and Aston Martin are working closely as one team to develop and evaluate the multiple countermeasures to issue.
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