Aston Martin and Honda: an improved chassis, but a crucial doubt

Aston Martin has taken a huge step forward in terms of car. That is a fact that is easily verified by what happened in the last two races. What does Aston Martin aspire to from now on? What conclusions can be drawn from what was seen in Zandvoort? We analyze it.

A clear aerodynamic evolution

In Budapest, the green team introduced a revolutionized car, almost new, with up to 16 evolutions and a very important weight reduction of about 14 kilos. That was a net improvement in time that was coupled with progress made through much better aerodynamics. There, it is estimated that the evolution in the chassis was 1.5 to 1.8 seconds.

And after the summer break, Five more novelties arrived in Zandvoort that completed this evolution and the jump with this chassis was greater. From being on average about 3.6 seconds behind the lead in Q1, to being just over a second away with Alonso at the wheel, yes, on a very specific track.

However, it is not clear that in one lap the full potential of a car that was 12th in his penultimate Q1 lap attemptbefore Fernando saw himself affected by traffic on his final preparation lap, which could have affected the time of his final lap, insufficient to advance to Q2.

In this sense, It is believed that there is still more potential to be extracted from chassis optimizationsince it is the first time that it was fully put on the track in a weekend with only one Free Practice session to test and understand it. But what was seen in the race was encouraging. Its good downforce allowed it to shine in several key aspects.

The first, the brilliant degradation of the tires due to how well the car can take care of the rubber, pulling more aerodynamic grip than the rubber itself to extend your life. “There we see the quality of the cars and the Aston stands out a little. So we are happy with the direction taken in the chassis,” said a Alonso that when crossing the finish line he defined the car as “excellent to ride”, confident that “there is more to come”.

And as he said Adrian Newey in Hungarywill bring more evolutions in monza either Baku and more weight reduction is expected throughout the year.

This degradation allowed Fernando to be the only driver to carry out a one-stop strategy, in a race in which everyone went to two or three stops, being able to extend the life of the tires (28 turns for the soft one and 36 for the hard one) and going from 18th to 9th thanks to that plan and pure pace, a race pace that was similar to that of the best in the middle zone. In fact, the car was also the fastest on the grid in the corners 7 to 9 section. And that, with a car that still lacked a lot of top speed at the debut of the new Honda engine.

The engine doubt

As the journalist said Andrew Benson on the ‘BBC’, the debut of the new Honda engine was confusing. And it is still not clear how much their improvement in power is because they could not squeeze it out.

All this, because the initial problems with the behavior of the propeller that its predecessor already had reappeared: it still does not do what the pilot wants. On Friday, in the ‘qualy sprint’, Alonso braked in turn 1 and the engine continued to accelerate.

You have to adjust the engine brake, the way the gears engage and other aspects. And the solution may be in the software, at the Honda factory in Sakura. Above all, that affects one lap, at most, with the qualifying map.

At Honda they can solve it, because they already did it with the previous engine, and this time, they will be able to use that learning. Fixing these areas of driveability of the engine is essential so that Alonso can attack with everything, trusting that the engine will have constant behavior, without shocks or surprises, corner by corner. Now, he can’t do it. However, we will have to wait several races for this to no longer be a problem.

Attention: at Monza they should be at the back again

But above all, we must keep one thing in mind: the step forward is in the chassis and the Honda engine will continue to be well behind the rest of the engines. No matter how good the car is in aerodynamics, on circuits with long straights, the speed deficit can send them back to the rear, as will happen at Monza next week.

On tracks with less engine importance, Aston Martin should be able to fight in the middle zone and, in some of them, for the points. Looking ahead to a better 2027, it is crucial that Honda takes a big step forward, since on the chassis side, Newey believes it is already on the right path to continue evolving this concept.

Mike Krack, Aston Martin’s track manager, already advanced it last Thursday.

“I think we have to go step by step, continue improving from now until the end of the season and keep that positive direction. Now, There will also be setbacks. There will be races in which we will suffer much more than in othersdue to the characteristics of the circuits and also the competition. Other teams have introduced improvements here and there, and then you can have a drop or perhaps a peak in performance,” he commented in the run-up to the Netherlands GP.

“Overall, I think the most important thing, if we step back and look at the whole thing, is to see that there is progress throughout the season. You can’t predict where you are going to end up. But it is important that we see progress in terms of reliability and performance between now and the end of the season,” he added.

“There will be some circuits where we will be quite good, as was the case in Budapest. I think our race performance was quite solid, but there will also be races where we will suffer more. But I think there will be certain weekends where we will be good and we will not be far away (from leading the middle zone)”, Krack finished on Thursday.