Aston Martin and Honda give good news to Alonso: “I’m happy with it”

The Madring circuit is making its debut in F1 and all the teams warn of the technical difficulty of this circuit, very complex and with the walls very close. Any mistake can take you to the barriers and the pilot can make a little more difference with his skill and bravery. But to do this, Fernando Alonso will need confidence in the car. It is crucial to be able to attack as much as possible in search of a better result. And Aston Martin and Honda trust that the car and the engine allow them to do it.

Fernando Alonso arrives at a route that theoretically fits the great performance of the new chassis created by Newey and which demonstrated such good cornering performance in Budapest and Zandvoort. But one doubt remained: to have that confidence to attack such difficult curves and approach the walls, the pilot must have good engine controllability.

He needs the engine to do exactly what he asks, and not repeat the initial problems at Zandvoort, when Alonso found himself braking but his engine kept pushing. Or the problems you had with the gear shift and its synchronization with the engine.

That is the main aspect that Honda has focused on together with Aston Martin (they made it clear that it was a joint effort) and in that area, Orihara and Krack were optimistic about the step forward achieved with the countermeasures introduced in Monza to improve that aspect.

“I am happy with the step forward we took in Monza. And I already said it before: ease of driving is a very important aspect,” said Mike Krack when asked by MD at the press conference prior to the Spanish F1 GP this weekend, in the Aston Martin hospitality, next to Orihara.

“It doesn’t depend solely on the engine or solely on the chassis; it is really the combination of both. The gear reductions, the brakes, what the condition of the tires is, what speed you have reached with superclipping or whatever… There are many elements that come into play in this. But I am very happy with the step we took together in Monza,” added the Luxembourger.

“Now, the performance wasn’t very good at Monza (due to the lack of power), that’s clear. But for a circuit like this, it’s good to have that improvement because it gives you confidence. And confidence is the only way to be able to attack when you have the walls so close. It’s a good step forward. I think Orihara will agree with me: drivability is never good enough. You can always improve,” he added.

“And we will continue working on it, as we have done all season. So I am sure, or rather I am happy, that we have taken that step”he commented. And that final nuance is important, since to be sure, they must first confirm that this step forward is real on a track with many curves and very demanding gear changes.

Furthermore, Krack highlighted that on this track, the driver can make the difference. Alonso can do it because of his ability to adapt very quickly to new routes and maximize the car’s performance before many rivals. And also for his piloting between walls.

“When you look at the layout of this circuit and see the walls so close, I think the driver can make the difference. Not everywhere, but there are some areas where I think the driver can make a difference, and that’s good. “I like these circuits where the driver can make the difference and, yes, I am quite confident that we will be able to see our drivers perform well.”

Q2 and Q3?

However, although this track can adapt very well to the Aston Martin chassis and the importance of the engine here is not as much as Monza, when MD asked Mike Krack if Q3 was possible for Alonso, he preferred to lower expectations.

He insisted that it is key to start the weekend conservatively to improve, especially because it is a new route, in which it is easy to hit the wall, and in which it is key to make progress in important aspects such as cooling (the banked curve is a challenge in terms of oil and lubrication due to its G forces and long-lasting inclination, for more than 500 meters).

“No, I think we have to keep our feet on the ground. We are where we are. We have a new circuit that we need to identify and get to know. We have done our preparation, but let’s not forget that we have only advanced from Q1 once. So to talk about Q3 I think would even be a little arrogant,” he noted.

“Now, perhaps this is not a normal classification. What you’re saying is, if there’s chaos and those types of situations, we have to be prepared. I think we try to be as prepared as possible. But, as Orihara just mentioned, when you come to a weekend where you have no prior experience and your entire knowledge base comes from simulations and coming to take a look, you need to start conservatively and build your knowledge step by step,” Krack said.

“We have to try to do better than the competition. But our rivals are also very strong. So, at the end of the day, I don’t expect a big surprise. PBut if things get chaotic, I think you have to be there and try to take advantage of everything you can. And the same applies to Sunday,” he added.

They then asked him if this circuit could give Fernando a chance to achieve his best result of the year.

“Well, we haven’t done a lap yet. We’ve never been here and we haven’t done a lap yet, so we’re going to take it step by step. We know that when the track conditions are very bad and everything is new, we’ve seen some extraordinary performances from Alonso,” he commented.

“I remember Qatar two or three years ago, when there was a sandstorm and the track was very, very slow, and at some points he was four or five seconds faster than everyone. So we could see something similar in FP1, but then there is FP2 and FP3 for everyone to make up ground. So, if we get first in qualifying first thing in the morning, I think we’ll be fine,” he said, with a final joke.

Orihara, positive: details the work done at Honda

For his part, Orihara, also positive in this area, revealed the work carried out from Zandvoort to improve that key handling so that the driver can squeeze the potential of Newey’s good chassis and an engine that is still lacking in edge, something that will not affect as much in Madring.

“In the Netherlands we had some drivability problems and we took some countermeasures to Monza, mainly in the combustion section. “The important thing is to achieve stable combustion to offer stable torque delivery.”., commented the Japanese.

“We then saw good progression in the data during FP1 and also received positive feedback from the drivers after that session. Throughout the weekend We tried to optimize our data settings and it worked well as we received positive feedback from the pilots after the second day“he explained.

“So we find the direction we should go and, After Monza, we took all the data and feedback back to the test bench to, once again, bring here another countermeasure with which to continue improving drivability.. Manageability or ease of driving is something that always needs to be improved, step by step, but we have found a good direction in which to move forward,” concluded Orihara.

More improvements from Honda during the year?

As for whether Honda plans to make more improvements this year, Orihara was clear.

“Once again, the first main point is that, although we have found some improvements, we still need to improve the drivability. The main objective is to improve the control of our new specification engine. That is our main focus. But we have also introduced some small adjustments to improve performance. We always make some calibration change to optimize our performance level,” explained the Japanese.

“So the main objective is manageability, but we also always introduce some calibration change to obtain a little more performance. It is not something significant, but we always need to improve step by step,” he concluded.