Benson (BBC): “More than half the gap to Aston Martin’s leaders is attributable to the chassis”

A shock start Honda and Aston Martin dreamed of a decidedly different Japanese GP – it is the home race of the Japanese engine manufacturer – but the start of the partnership between the Japanese giant and Lawrence Stroll’s team is presenting more obstacles than expected. At the moment Aston Martin is the worst car on the starting grid behind even Cadillac. At the press conference reserved for team principals, Honda HRC number 1 Koji Watanabe underlined that on a chassis level Aston Martin is as responsible as the Honda power unit in making the AMR26 uncompetitive. Andrew Benson, correspondent to the GPs on behalf of the BBC, answered questions from users and underlined that in reality the deficit of the chassis weighs more on the balance sheet than that of the power unit: “Over half of Aston Martin’s gap compared to the leaders was due to the chassis, this fact was indicated to me by an authoritative and highly experienced figure during the Suzuka weekend – Benson’s words – a thesis which coincides with what was observed by the other teams on the GPS data regarding the speed of the cars in the different sections of the circuit, data to which all teams have access. Establishing a clear distribution is however complicated because the behavior of the engine can influence the cornering performance of the car. There has been a lot of talk about vibrations, but are they an intrinsic factor to the engine or is it the chassis that amplifies them? Newey himself admitted in Australia that the car had deficiencies and that in terms of chassis it was probably the fifth force on the track Alpine and Haas. The AMR26 is certainly overweight and particularly suffers from fast corners.”