FORMULA 1 F1 CALENDAR 2026 LEWIS HAMILTON MOTOGP RUMOURS

Newey drops bombshell at Honda ahead of the Australian Grand Prix

Photo: Race Pictures

F1 News

01:15, 05 Mar

Updated: 01:19, 05 Mar

0 Comments

byTim Kraaij

Adrian Newey has dropped a bombshell ahead of the race weekend in Australia. According to the team boss of the British outfit, Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll will not be able to finish the Grand Prix in Melbourne.

The small hospitality units in the Australian paddock didn’t help the setting for what turned out to be an extremely well-attended press session. The entire media center had emptied out for the press conference with Adrian Newey and Koji Watanabe. The big question: what is the situation at Aston Martin and Honda?

Dramatic, as quickly became clear during the session. When asked about the car’s problems, Newey didn’t mince words. “That vibration into the chassis is causing a few reliability problems. Mirrors falling off, tail lights falling off, all that sort of thing, which we are having to address.”

Maximum number of laps for Aston Martin drivers

“But the much more significant problem with that is that that vibration is transmitted ultimately into the driver's fingers. So, 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. There's no point in being open and honest in this meeting."

"It's something that, unfortunately, Koji and I haven't had a chance to discuss properly prior to this meeting. 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."

First crack in the Aston Martin and Honda relationship

Adrian Newey’s final remark is striking. This was, after all, a press moment scheduled by Aston Martin. Why wasn’t there an opportunity to discuss things together before the press event? Shouldn’t that have happened behind closed doors first, before scheduling a media session?

The Honda executive was left speechless as a result. Watanabe did not address any questions in detail. According to him, it would only become truly clear in Australia how good or bad the Honda engine is.