From Spain: Honda disaster, gap with Mercedes of 5%. Engine upgraded by ADUO at Silverstone but all-in on 2027

Inside the Aston-Honda crisis Among Ferrari fans – who have been waiting since 2008 to win a world title – the phrase “we’ll win next year” has become a sort of ironic and bitter mantra. But this time this concept can be attributed even more than to the red cars to the green ones of the Aston Martin team. The Silverstone team, in partnership with Honda, was supposed to be one of the great protagonists of this season; instead the start of the new regulatory cycle was a disaster across the board for the team owned by Lawrence Stroll. The AMR26 is full of problems, but there is no doubt that a large component of the performance deficit also comes from the Japanese power unit, which is unreliable and enormously underperforming compared to the competition. In these weeks of break from on-track activity, everyone’s focus is on the effects that the ADUO – the regulatory mechanism introduced by the FIA ​​to offer a chance of recovery to engine engineers who find themselves at a clear disadvantage compared to the competition – could have on the continuation of the championship. The colleagues of the Spanish newspaper Marca, very attentive to what is happening at Aston Martin given the presence of Fernando Alonso in the team, have even estimated the performance gap between the Japanese PU and Mercedes at a good 5%, a reference for the entire grid at this start of the season. To get an idea of ​​the enormity of this gap, just think that the gap ranges envisaged by the ADUO for the allocation of additional resources to those who had to recover were 2 and 4%. Between Silverstone and 2027 With the cancellation of the races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the first improvements to the power units should be allowed in the Monaco GP, the sixth round of this championship. However, according to what was suggested by the Spanish media, Honda should be able to present its enhanced engine thanks to the ‘concessions’ of the ADUO only in Aston Martin’s home GP, at Silverstone. However, given the enormous performance deficit that Honda pays compared to the competition, it is difficult to imagine that these improvements, however effective, could upset the performance of the British team. As already suggested by Aston Martin team principal Adrian Newey in the first press conference of the year in Australia, it cannot therefore be ruled out that most of the resources and efforts will already be directed towards 2027, avoiding ‘wasting’ them on a project that can only be patched up and with little chance of obtaining tangible results. The objective could therefore be to completely overturn the power unit, in the hope of starting the next World Championship more ‘in contact’ with the rest of the starting grid.