Aston Martin is reportedly considering an early retirement in Australia due to a shortage of spare parts
Via DeepL:
Aston Martin has fallen into a black hole. And the main cause of this precipitous decline stems from Honda. The RA626H power unit fitted to the AMR26 proved to be a major problem that prevented the Silverstone team from conducting normal testing in the second session in Bahrain.
Honda arrived at the Melbourne debut completely unprepared. Breakdowns during testing caused a crisis in the supply of spare parts, and for a moment, the idea of skipping Australia was even considered, citing force majeure.
It would have been a disaster for F1 to start the cycle of agile single-seaters without a team and the penalties that Aston Martin would have had to pay for breaking the Concorde Agreement, which regulates the commercial agreements between the teams and the promoter.
The AMR26 will therefore be in the pits in Melbourne, but the intention will be to cover the minimum distance to get into the race and then stop after a few laps. In the meantime, a sort of crisis unit has been set up to support Honda in this difficult and dramatic moment, and Newey’s staff is in frequent contact with the Japanese team in Sakura to address the priorities that need to be resolved.
It is wild as fuck that new PU manufacturers joined the grid this year and are turning laps reliably, but Honda with years of F1 PU data and experience can’t seem to keep theirs from destroying itself yet again. Yikes.
At least we can count on Fernando to deliver some spicy one liners.
The Honda team that built the RB PU was shut down. Its IP sold to RBPT and staff made redundant or transferred to other departments.
This iteration is a brand new enterprise, with new IP and staff. No data from the past.
Yes, it’s a brand new enterprise, but one would think that Honda as a corporation still retains a copy of the engine development data from at least until 2021, before the engine freeze.
They sold it.
It’s a new Honda team, they are not the same crew that built the championship winning engines for Red Bull.
Definitely embarassing though that Audi seems to beat them at the moment.
Apparently the Aramco refinery in Saudi was attacked. So even their fuel supplier isn’t looking too great right now.
Insane how things are going @ AM
Stroll only needs one lap to crash.
