The Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team’s 2026 season started worse than any of its rivals on the grid.
The team completed the fewest laps of any car across pre-season testing, and reliability problems with the Honda power unit persisted well into the campaign.
Honda’s arrival as Aston Martin’s power unit supplier this year marked its return to Formula 1 as a full works partner, ending its previous relationship with the Red Bull stable at the close of 2025.
The transition proved difficult.
By Hungary, Aston Martin sat second-to-last in the Constructors’ Championship, with performance and reliability issues on both the chassis and power unit sides compounding each other.
Aston Martin’s response arrived in Budapest, where 16 developments, led by Adrian Newey, helped Fernando Alonso reach Q2 for the first time this season.
Honda’s contribution follows at Zandvoort for the Heineken Dutch Grand Prix and Shintaro Orihara, Honda’s Trackside General Manager and Chief Engineer, has now detailed what the engine side of that upgrade actually involves.
“So it’s kind of secret, but I can disclose a little bit,” he said on Honda’s official F1 Instagram feed.
“We changed the combustion chamber to make combustion faster, also we changed the piston shape also to get good combustion.
“Also we modified some lubrication system to reduce friction.”
Each change targets a different part of the same problem. A revised combustion chamber and piston shape both aim at how efficiently the engine burns fuel, while the lubrication changes address mechanical friction losses, a separate but related route to the same goal of extracting more usable power from the unit.
Orihara was direct about the scale of what Honda attempted.
“So we had a quite big risk to improve engine performance,” he said.
“I can’t disclose the detail number, but we have achieved our internal target. I’m confident what the HRC Sakura factory guys achieved for the spec-two engine. And we are excited to bring new spec engine to Netherlands.”
The new specification has already run once, during an Aston Martin filming day at the Hungaroring ahead of the summer break, giving Honda initial data before its competitive debut at Zandvoort.
Through the tough moments, our relationship has been build up through the season and now I think we are quite good position in relationship.
Shintaro Orihara
Aston Martin’s Chief Trackside Officer, Mike Krack, has previously credited the improved relationship between the two organisations for how smoothly that process has gone and Orihara’s own comments echoed that framing.
“Our relationship was good at beginning,” he added.
“But also through the tough moments, our relationship has been build up through the season and now I think we are quite good position in relationship.”
Zandvoort is not the end of the programme. Aston Martin’s Team Principal, Adrian Newey, has confirmed further chassis upgrades are scheduled in the Netherlands, as well as for Monza and Baku, building on the Hungary package alongside Honda’s engine step as both parties work to improve on a poor start to the year.
