Driving troubled Aston Martin F1 car 'like being electrocuted'

Lance Stroll has compared the severe vibrations impacting Aston Martin’s 2026 Formula 1 car to “electrocuting yourself on a chair”.

Ahead of this weekend’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix, Aston Martin team principal Adrian Newey staggeringly revealed concerns that vibrations from the Honda power unit could cause permanent nerve damage to its drivers.

Newey also suggested it is unlikely that either of Aston Martin’s cars will be able to finish the opening round in Melbourne due to the Honda reliability problems which plagued the team throughout pre-season testing in Bahrain.

"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,” Newey explained.

"I think there's no point in [not] being open and honest in this meeting [press conference] on our expectations. 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."

Asked about the pain and sensations he is experiencing in the AMR26, Stroll told F1 TV: “I don't know how you can compare it. I guess just electrocute yourself on a chair or something like that, not far off.

“It's just, it's very uncomfortable vibrations. It's bad for the engine, but also for the human inside the car. We need to get on top of it, but I think we will.”

Meanwhile, team-mate Fernando Alonso explained: "The driver, we feel those as well and feel a little bit numb in the fingers and feet as well because of this low frequency all the time in the car."

Aston Martin is braced for an incredible challenging start to 2026 as a result of the issues it has encountered.

"Are we going to be where we want to be this weekend? No," Stroll added.

"Bahrain was only a couple of weeks ago, and these changes don't happen over night. But, we made some changes over the last couple of weeks and we'll see how we go.

"It's not good. We're trying to get on top of it, fix it. We have some ideas this week to solve some of those issues, and we'll see in FP1 if it's better than it was in Bahrain."