Adrian Newey breaks down Aston Martin’s woeful start to 2026 F1 season

Alonso complained of numbness in his hands and feet caused by the reverberations he was feeling through the steering wheel and pedals, to which team principal Adrian Newey had remarked before the season-opening race in Australia, could cause nerve damage to his drivers if the issue continued.

In this instance, the root cause of the problem was the battery inside the power unit from supplier Honda. The marriage between the two manufacturing heavyweights has been a rocky one so far. There has certainly been no honeymoon period.

In pre-season across the three tests in Barcelona and Bahrain, Aston Martin completed the fewest laps after encountering the most issues, which Newey laid bare at Melbourne's Albert Park on a sunny Thursday morning before the storm clouds gathered over the team and its power unit partner for the remainder of the weekend.

"What is important to remember is effectively the PU, that is the combination of the ICE and possibly the MGU as well, is the source of the vibration," said Newey, who had Koji Watanabe, the president of the Honda Racing Corporation sat alongside him at the time. "It's the amplifier”.

"The chassis, in that scenario, is the receiver. A carbon chassis is a naturally stiff structure with very little damping. So, the transmission of that vibration into the chassis, we haven't made any progress. That's something we know. The much more significant problem is that vibration is transmitted ultimately into the driver's fingers."

Alonso and Stroll both retired from the Australian Grand Prix, managing a combined 64 laps, albeit both stopping for lengthy periods along the way before being sent back out after changes were made, only to stop permanently soon after.

The two-time Formula 1 World Champion and his Canadian team-mate at least saw the chequered flag in the sprint race in Shanghai, only for the Grand Prix itself to prove a step too far, certainly on Alonso's side of the garage.

Honda claims it applied "countermeasures" to negate the vibrations as much as possible, although neither Watanabe nor Shintaro Orihara, Honda trackside general manager and chief engineer, explained what they consisted of.

Ahead of Honda's home race this weekend, these are dark days for the Japanese company. Ordinarily, it would celebrate the occasion, as it did in seasons past with former partner Red Bull, with the production of special liveries and other notable events. This time around, it has decided to maintain a low profile; there is nothing to shout about.

Newey pulled no punches when he indicated one of the issues at hand, in that the Honda personnel working on the power unit for Aston Martin were different to those who had worked on the system with Red Bull. That database of knowledge and understanding was no longer there.

"A bit of history is important here," explained Newey. "Honda pulled out [of F1] at the end of 2021. They then re-entered the sport, kind of, at the end of 2022, so over roughly a year, a year and a bit out of competition."

"When they reformed, a lot of the original group had, it now transpires, disbanded and gone to work on solar panels or whatever, and so a lot of the group that reformed are actually fresh to Formula 1. They didn’t bring the experience that they had had previously.

"Plus, when they came back in 2023, that was the first year of the budget cap introduction for engines, so all their rivals had been developing away through ’21, ’22 with continuity, their existing team and free of the budget cap.

"They re-entered with […] I’m guessing, 30 per cent of their original team, and now in a budget cap era, so they started very much on the back foot and unfortunately, they’ve struggled to catch back up."

Quite how such remarks will have been received in Honda's halls of motorsport power at its headquarters in Sakura can only be imagined. Newey added that the situation he highlighted did not come to light until he, owner Lawrence Stroll, and chief strategy officer and former team principal Andy Cowell visited Japan in November last year.

For Newey in particular, his tenure as team principal may not last too much longer if former Red Bull colleague Jonathan Wheatley takes up the reins following his departure from Audi last week for "personal reasons", after just a year in charge.

Such a move, if it comes to fruition, would free Newey up to singularly focus again on the job he was originally appointed to do when he joined in March 2025, that of managing technical partner, and the development of a car he is convinced is amongst the best on the grid in terms of chassis.

Newey maintains the relationship with Honda "has strengthened," given the journey the two companies have been on so far. "We are working very much as a partnership now, and that's good, clearly," he said. "I think we can help each other."

You sense the pain will continue, in the short-term at least. For the drivers, they are just passengers, waiting for Honda to stem the tide of the issues it has faced so far.

Newey is naturally concerned for Alonso, who turns 45 in a few months, not so much for his physical state, but what the situation is doing to him mentally.

"In my opinion, he’s one of the true greats," said Newey. "With his ability, talent, all-round capability, he should have won, in truth, far more than the two Championships he has to his name, and however many race wins.

"He’s still super quick, super talented, super sharp. Talking to him, he doesn’t feel as if he’s suffering in any way. But for Fernando, it’s a hard mental place to be in at the moment."

Alonso, though, is unconcerned. For him, winning is everything. He is very much in the camp of one of Ayrton Senna's most famous quotes: "second is the first of the losers".

Responding to Newey's suggestion about possible mental struggles, and the diminishing opportunities of another race win — 13 years and counting since his last — the Spanish driver said, “to finish in any other position that is not first, for me, it’s the same pain and the same struggle.

“Obviously, we are now on this journey with the team, which is not ideal, but it’s the first year of this collaboration between Aston Martin and Honda. We have to go through this moment in time, and I’m ready to help as much as I can.”

That is naturally commendable. But while the wait goes on, and as Stroll suggested, there’s no harm in asking for divine intervention to help out. 

Images courtesy of Getty Images.