Honda has issued a statement after Aston Martin suffered power-unit trouble in Bahrain. On Thursday Fernando Alonso’s session ended prematurely when his car stalled with an issue at Turn 4. On the final day in Sakhir Lance Stroll will run for the British outfit, although the team — after more than three hours of running — still hadn’t shown up on track. According to Honda, Aston Martin must for the time being be limited to “short stints”.
Alonso’s stoppage on Thursday was another setback in the build-up to 2026. During the shakedown in Barcelona Aston Martin was already late to the party and could only put limited mileage on the AMR26. The subsequent test week in Bahrain has been patchy too. “We know we are lacking pace and there are areas where we need to improve,” Mike Krack admitted earlier. Stroll put his finger on the sore spot: “We’re four to five seconds short,” he concluded flatly.
On Friday the Canadian reclaimed the wheel from Alonso, but the Aston Martin stayed in the garage for the morning session. Honda expanded on the issue in a statement. “Our final run with Fernando Alonso on Thursday revealed a battery fault that affected our test schedule,” the statement said. “Since then we have run simulations on the dyno in Japan. Because of this fault and a shortage of power-unit components we have adjusted today’s schedule and are restricting ourselves to short runs.”
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