Mar.9 (GMM) Honda Racing’s senior managing director Ikuo Takeishi has denied any knowledge of moves by Aston Martin to terminate their works partnership, as the Japanese manufacturer faces mounting pressure following a Melbourne race weekend that exposed the full depth of their crisis.
“At least, I haven’t heard anything about that directly,” Takeishi said when asked point blank about reports that team owner Lawrence Stroll may be seeking to end the deal.
“What we need is to ensure reliability and improve performance. That’s what I want to focus on.”
The denial came as Fernando Alonso directly contradicted Honda Racing president Koji Watanabe’s upbeat assessment of progress made in Melbourne.
Watanabe had cited feedback from Lance Stroll that vibrations were “about half” of what they had been in Bahrain. Alonso was having none of it.
“The vibrations are the same as in Bahrain – it’s not the best feeling,” the Spaniard said after the Australian GP. “Honda believes they’ve reduced the vibrations with some modifications, but you can’t feel it in the chassis.”
He also confirmed there would be no improvement in Shanghai. “It won’t be any different in China – we’re expecting another tough weekend. In Japan there might be some improvements, hopefully, and more spare parts.
“I think more batteries arrive in Japan and there we can push the car knowing we can repair it, but in China we’ll have to be extremely cautious again.”
Alonso himself retired after just 15 laps on Sunday despite having a healthy car, purely to preserve the team’s last remaining batteries for China. Lance Stroll completed significantly more of the race.
Aston Martin’s head of trackside operations Mike Krack said the call was straightforward. “It’s common knowledge that we’re short on parts. There wasn’t much to gain from where we were, and we jointly decided to preserve the components.
“There were no issues related to the power unit. I’m pretty sure we could have finished the race with Fernando.”
Takeishi also responded directly to Newey’s bombshell admission last week that Aston Martin had no idea Honda’s experienced workforce had largely dispersed after the manufacturer’s withdrawal from F1 at the end of 2021.
“It’s true that after development was halted at the end of February 2022, many Sakura employees left for other departments,” he acknowledged.
“If we only consider experience, we may have fewer members than the fourth generation. But we’ve brought in talented and highly qualified people. In terms of staffing, we now have a similar workforce to the fourth generation. However, we must admit that it took us some time to get where we are now.”
Honda’s trackside chief engineer Shintaro Orihara insisted Melbourne represented genuine forward momentum. “The progress is very significant if we compare it to our situation in Bahrain,” he said, adding that the team was confident battery reliability would improve in China.
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