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Warriors LIVE on Sport Nation"Scary place": Aston Martin boss hopeful to get through Aus GP amid battery issues
Peter McGinley • March 6th, 2026 8:34 pm
Aston Martin has had a shocker of a start to the weekend in Melbourne on the first day of practice of the F1 season.
After running the least laps of any team in winter testing, the British outfit could only manage three laps through Lance Stroll in the first session, while Fernando Alonso did not take to Albert Park at all.
The second session was somewhat better, with a total of 31 laps between the two drivers, but he pair were relegated to 20th and 21st and five to six seconds off the pace, sandwiched in between new team Cadillac - and were perhaps only saved from being last and second last by virtue of Sergio Perez having a hydraulics issue and failing to set a time at all.
Adrian Newey joined the team in 2025 after years of success at Red Bull, taking over as Team Principal in November.
The technical genius explained on Friday that a combination of limited experience, development time and budget restrictions all combined to contribute to the current state Honda are in, with the team coming into the season opener dealing with a significant vibration issue onboard the AMR26.
“Honda pulled out at the end of 2021. They then re-entered the sport at the end of 2022, so roughly a year and a bit out of competition,” said Newey.
“When they re-formed, a lot of the original group had now transferred, disbanded, gone to work on solar panels or whatever, and so the group that re-formed are actually fresh to Formula 1.
“They didn’t bring the experience they had previously, plus 2023 was the year of the budget cap’s introduction for engines.
“All their rivals has been developing away through ’21 and ’22, with their existing team and free of budget caps. They re-entered with I’m guessing, 30% of their original team, and now in a budget cap era.
“So they started very much on the back foot and they’ve struggled to catch back up.”
Speculation swirled around the F1 paddock last year that Honda were struggling with their 2026 engine development to fit the new regulations – and the team only found out the true story late in the piece.
“We only really became aware of it in November of last year when Andy Cowell (Chief Strategy Officer) and myself went to Tokyo to discuss rumours starting to suggest the original target, they weren’t going to achieve for race one,” said Newey.
The team principal went on to warn that things could go from back to worse for Aston Martin this weekend in Melbourne, with the team also struggling with limited battery power and and unable to fly in spares.
“We came here with four batteries, we’ve had conditioning problems and communication problems with two of those batteries as we sit here today and we have two operational batteries,” said Adrian.
“Given our rate of battery damage, it’s quite a scary place to be in.
“Obviously we’re hopeful to get through the weekend and start two cars...but it’s very difficult to be concrete at the moment about that.”
In many respects it is a case of Back to the Future for Fernando Alonso, with his tenue at McLaren between 2015-2017 also plagued by Honda engine issues.
While the current situation Aston Martin find themselves in is challenging on both team and driver, the boss was full of praise for the Spaniard, and said he was sharper than ever in his 23rd season in F1.
“In my opinion he’s one of the true greats, his ability, his talent, his all-round capability,” said Newey.
“He should have won in truth far more than the two championships he has to his name.
“He’s still super quick, super talented, super sharp. Talking to him he doesn’t feel like he’s suffering in any way, his eyesight is still very good. He’s very proud of the fact that he was the fastest starter last year on reaction time.
“He’s an amazing person, and we all I suppose have been trying to contain our hopes because we knew this was going to be a difficult year of build here. We knew that in the first part of the season we were likely to be a bit behind but hopefully with potential which we still have on the chassis side, to catch back up.
“For Fernando, it’s a hard mental place to be in at the moment.”
