(Motorsport-Total.com) – During the Formula 1 season opener 2026 in Australia, much of the media attention was focused on Aston Martin and the number of batteries Honda had available in Melbourne. But on Friday, team principal Adrian Newey shared an even more interesting quote that had nothing to do with this topic.
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The legendary designer revealed that Aston Martin did not know until November 2025 that Honda’s Formula 1 project was in a completely different state than in the glorious years with Red Bull.
“No, we were not aware of that,” Newey replied in Australia. “We only really became aware of it in November last year when Lawrence [Stroll], Andy Cowell and I traveled to Tokyo to investigate rumors that they would not achieve their original performance targets for the first race.”
“It turned out that many of the original employees did not return after the restart. So the answer is: No.”
This sounds surprising, as the deal was officially announced in May 2023. Newey’s words imply that Aston Martin did not fully know what they were getting into at the time of signing – although team members emphasize that the situation is more nuanced and that several leadership changes at Aston Martin played a role.
What is behind the “misunderstanding” mentioned by Honda?
HRC President Koji Watanabe explains this in Suzuka, saying that the situation is partly due to something he describes as “a misunderstanding.”
“Yes, basically I think it’s a misunderstanding. Our company policy is to regularly rotate the engineers of motorsport projects into mass production or more advanced technologies such as jets, eVTOL, hydrogen technology or similar. That’s part of the explanation; we maintained this rotation from the beginning,” he explains.
“As I also said before, rebuilding the organization took some time. That was probably his concern, I think, but by now we have a sufficient organization and the necessary talent.”
All Formula 1 team principals of Aston Martin
Watanabe’s words require some explanation. Part of the misunderstanding is that the expectations of the outside world were too high. These expectations were still based on the successes with Red Bull and Max Verstappen, but the reality at Honda had changed significantly since then.
“We ended our Formula 1 activities at the end of 2021 and only announced our return in 2023. So there was a period when our Formula 1 activities were very limited,” Watanabe admits. “It also took us some time to rebuild the organization for the restart of Formula 1 development.”
In the meantime, many employees were assigned to other departments within the overall group. This affected primarily the mass production of road cars, but also motorcycles, racing motorcycles, reusable rockets and even solar panels – which Newey jokingly alluded to in Melbourne.
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For various reasons, including personal ones, many members of the original Formula 1 team did not return to the project afterwards.
This means that the team today has a significantly different composition and lacks the Formula 1 experience from the Red Bull years. A second consequence is that rebuilding the project took more time than Honda originally expected.
The latter, logically, Aston Martin could not have known when the contract was signed in 2023, and this is exactly part of the “misunderstanding” that Watanabe refers to in Suzuka.
Vibrations on Honda’s F1 test bench not fully visible
Nevertheless, the president of Honda Racing Corporation emphasizes that the collaboration between Aston Martin and Honda is now in full swing after a difficult build-up phase.
“The relationship between Aston Martin and Honda is very good. At the level of the actual development team, for example, [Tetsushi] Kakuda as project leader of the power unit on Honda’s side and Enrico Cardile on Aston Martin’s side work closely together.”
“I myself and Mr. Stroll as well as Adrian Newey and I have a very good relationship, so I’m not worried about that,” said the Japanese.
Nevertheless, much remains to be done – both in terms of reliability and pure performance for 2026 and 2027. Apart from the human aspect, the current situation was also influenced by the fact that not all of Honda’s problems were visible in the simulations before the season.
“The most difficult point is that we started development somewhat later than the others. Furthermore, the vibrations in the tests on the test bench are at an acceptable level, but as soon as we integrate the unit into the actual chassis, these vibrations become much stronger than on the test bench,” Watanabe said.
“Of course, the PU cannot solve the problem alone. We are working very closely with Aston Martin to solve the problem – not just on the power unit, but together with the chassis.”
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