Honda feels pressure after Aston chassis breakthrough

Aston Martin's revamped chassis has turned heads in Hungary — and now Honda admits the pressure is on to match it when its upgraded engine arrives at Zandvoort.

Fernando Alonso says the pressure is now on Honda to deliver after Aston Martin's major chassis breakthrough in Hungary - and Honda agrees.

Aston's heavily revised chassis made a clear step forward at the Hungaroring, with Carlos Sainz even claiming the Silverstone based team now has the best chassis in the midfield.

And now, Honda will run its upgraded power unit in the car for the first time during a 200-kilometre filming day at the Hungaroring on Wednesday.

The new engine, rumoured to offer around 50 horsepower more, is then scheduled to make its race debut at Zandvoort after the summer break.

"There's some pressure for Honda," Alonso smiled.

However, the Spaniard stressed that the strained start to the Aston Martin-Honda partnership must now give way to closer cooperation.

"We are a team and we work together," he said.

"Between all of us, Honda has helped since the beginning of the year to solve the weaknesses of the car and we have helped them with consistency in the laps, in the deployment, in the software."

"It is a long road and we know it, but hopefully this is the first step for both factories to have more confidence."

"That is the most important thing."

Alonso said the Hungarian performance matched Aston Martin's factory predictions and finally demonstrated that its correlation problems are being resolved.

"What we saw in Hungary is more or less what we expected, as the correlation is good and the performance has improved."

"Of course, it's still early days with this new car, since it's new and also a different concept. Furthermore, there will be more fine-tuning and optimisation, and we'll also have the engine upgrade."

"It will be an interesting test to see where we stand and what it allows us to compete for."

A first taste of the new engine

Honda Racing Corporation lead engineer Shintaro Orihara confirmed the new specification will run on Wednesday, admitting Honda now feels pressure to match Aston Martin's chassis progress.

"To be fair, yes," he said when asked if he feels the pressure.

"Now we are back to racing the field. Then all improvement is very important to catch up to others."

"To introduce the new power unit in Zandvoort is quite important now the chassis is working well."

"So our power unit should bring some laptime gain."

He described Wednesday's limited running as a "good opportunity to check how our new engine runs on the chassis."

Vibration concerns resolved

There were renewed concerns about Honda vibrations during Friday practice in Hungary, although both parties say the problem was resolved.

"They were completely resolved on Saturday morning," Alonso said.

"We changed the power unit for a newer one. Perhaps it was an old engine that gave problems at the end of its lifespan because Saturday and Sunday went well."

Orihara said the oscillations appeared because "the engine temperature isn't optimised in the new chassis."

"We adjusted some parameters and have made considerable progress."

Aston Martin chief Mike Krack, however, rejected Sainz's claim that the team now has the midfield's best chassis.

"I don't think so," he said.

"We'll know in the next few races whether we've achieved better performance or not."

Aston Martin F1 team snapshot

See also: Aston Martin F1 team hub on F1-Fansite.

Related: Sainz urges Williams to copy Aston's Hungary leap

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Leopold

Leopold Pleijsier founded F1-Fansite.com in 2001 and has followed Formula 1 since the early 1980s. He writes about daily F1 news, race weekends, drivers and the sport’s history.

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