Honda clarifies Aston Martin F1 "misunderstanding" after Adrian Newey comments

HRC CEO and president Koji Watanabe says Adrian Newey’s concerns about a lack of continuity among the company’s Formula 1 staff resulted from “a misunderstanding.”

The Aston Martin team principal revealed in Australia that he and owner Lawrence Stroll only discovered in November that the engineering group at Sakura had changed substantially between the previous highly successful power unit and the current project.

However, Honda’s policy has always been to rotate engineers and switch people with F1 experience into other areas of the company.

In this case that process was exacerbated by the fact that the F1 department was wound down after the 2021 withdrawal announcement, and then rebooted in 2023 after confirmation that Honda would after all create a PU for the new regulations.

Newey noted in Melbourne that “they re-entered with, let’s say, only, 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 unfortunately, they’ve struggled to catch back up.”

Asked about Newey’s earlier comments on the situation Watanabe stressed that Honda has always worked in the same way.

“Basically, I think that it's a misunderstanding,” he said. “Our policy is the rotate the engineers of the motor sports to regularly to mass production, or more advanced technologies like jet or eVTOL or hydrologic, something like that. 

“We continue to rotate from the beginning. Probably my explanation is not enough. And also of course to rebuild the organisation took time, so that was his worry, I think. But now we have a sufficient organisation and talent.”

Watanabe confirmed that efforts to improve reliability by resolving the vibration issue are ongoing, although performance is also being addressed.

“At this moment, we are focussed on how we can improve the situation of vibration, mainly damage to battery area,” he said. “But also this time for Suzuka, we are improved energy management situation for more driving performance.

He added: “The most difficult point is that we started the development bit later than compared to the others. And also the test on the dyno, vibration is an acceptable level, but if once we integrate in the actual chassis, that vibration is getting much more than the test on the dyno.

“So of course, only PU, we cannot solve the problem. So we are really [working] closely together with Aston Martin to solve the problem, not only the power unit, but also together with the chassis.”

He conceded that there will be a limit to how much performance can be addressed within the current season, with the new ADUO system only allowing limited Upgrades.

“Under current regulations, it's difficult to improve the performance itself,” he said. “So currently we focus on how to improve the reliability, and also within the rules, we have to improve power.”

Asked what steps can be made by Abu Dhabi he said: “Well, we have some recovery plan together with Aston Martin. But we cannot tell that today.”