No miracle
Those hoping for a last minute miracle were proven wrong. In a Formula 1 built on details and thousandths of a second, the disaster of the Aston Martin-Honda team at the start of the season becomes more thunderous every day, increased exponentially by the stellar expectations that the team’s owners had placed on this regulatory revolution.
In the first official session of the year, the FP1 of the Australian GP, the situation that Adrian Newey’s team found itself in was simply embarrassing. Difficult to find other words. It was known that the green single-seaters were in Melbourne only to make a presence and avoid a very high fine, but seeing the clear demonstration of all this on the track still made a certain impression.
Double stop
Lance Stroll completed just 3 laps during the first free practice session and posted a time a full 30 seconds slower than leader Charles Leclerc. Fernando Alonso, at the dawn of his 23rd season in F1, didn’t even manage to complete a lap. Officially the team announced that for both cars the problem concerned the power unit.
The first press release was released by Honda: “We have found a suspicious problem relating to the power unit which will prevent car #14 from participating in FP1”, the message released to journalists. Shortly afterwards, Aston Martin confirmed similar problems on Lance Stroll’s car: “Lance’s FP1 session ended due to a suspected PU-related issue. Issues on both cars are under further investigation.” At the moment it is not clear whether the two AMR26s will take to the track during FP2.
