Stroll Slams Honda Drivability as Aston Upgrade Falls Short

Aston Martin waited all summer for Honda's Spec 2. One qualifying session later, Lance Stroll called it a lottery.

Honda's heavily anticipated engine upgrade may not have delivered the step Aston Martin hoped for at Zandvoort, with drivability now emerging as the package's main weakness.

Lance Stroll was blunt after qualifying P19. "Do I feel any improvement? Not really."

What is wrong with the new Honda engine?

By Stroll's account, the raw performance step is small and the way the power unit behaves is worse.

"Maybe a small step forward, but not enough. Chassis-wise, I think we're doing pretty well. We made a big step forward in Budapest."

"The next thing we really need to work on is drivability and power."

The specific complaint is engine braking and downshifts.

"The drivability is bad, really bad," said the Canadian. "It's a lottery."

"Right now, we're just not getting consistent engine braking on corner entry, and we're often experiencing delayed downshifts. So there are a lot of problems."

At a circuit built on commitment into blind, banked corners, a car that answers differently every lap is close to unusable.

Does Alonso agree the upgrade failed?

Not entirely. He is looking at the gap rather than the feeling.

Fernando Alonso pointed out that Aston Martin's deficit to the front has collapsed across two race weekends.

"In Budapest we were in Q2, and here we were a tenth of a second off," he said. "This is also the smallest difference to the Q1 leader. Piastri was 1.3 seconds faster than us."

"Before, we had an average difference of 4.5 seconds to the best, so we've improved by three seconds in two races. It's encouraging."

But the two-time champion agrees the Honda package still needs refinement, and that the fix is not a track-side one.

"Drivability is part of the improvement we'll see in laptimes," he said.

"But, unfortunately, we can't do much more on the track. We have to hope for major changes in physics, software, or whatever is necessary. It has to come from Japan, and it won't happen overnight."

"Starting with Monza, we'll have to take another step, and there are things to optimise in the package."

What does Honda say about it?

Chief engineer Shintaro Orihara accepts the work is unfinished.

"We've taken some important steps today, but there's still a lot to do to give the drivers the confidence they need," he said.

"This is our main objective in the short and medium term."

Confidence is the operative word. A power unit that is fast on a dyno and unpredictable on corner entry costs lap time twice: once in the data, and again in the driver's right foot.

What comes next for Aston Martin?

Ambassador Pedro de la Rosa told DAZN the priority list is short and unambiguous.

"We need to improve the drivability of the new engine, especially under braking and downshifting."

There is a second target for Monza and Baku.

"The goal now, in the short term, is to make the car lighter and at the weight limit, which it isn't yet, just like Williams."

Three seconds found in two races is real progress. Being overweight and unpredictable is what stands between that progress and points, as the 2026 standings make clear.

Related: Honda Reveals Spec 2 Power Unit Ahead of Zandvoort

About the author

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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