Aston Martin Provides Insight Into Honda Partnership Progress

Sunday, 31 December 2023 at 03:00

Formula One team principal Mike Krack recently gave an update on the current situation in collaboration with Honda.

The owner of Aston Martin, Lawrence Stroll, is on a mission to make his team the best in F1, and in 2023, he made an important strategic move that could bring the British team closer to his target.

Honda, an F1 PU (Power Unit) manufacturer, will end its collaboration with Red Bull at the end of the 2025 season, and since Red Bull decided the team wanted to build its own PUs starting in 2026, Honda had no partner from 2026 onwards.

Stroll took the opportunity and decided that instead of purchasing PUs from the Mercedes F1 team, Aston Martin would partner with Honda to have its own PUs.

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While 2026 is still more than two seasons away, Aston Martin is already structurally prepared for the partnership with Honda and started working on the new power units. Mike Krack told the media:

"The first step that had to be done was to set up some working groups for the different areas to define responsibilities, the usual stuff that you do when you have a technical partnership."

The team principal revealed his team is already beyond the first step and is now working on simulations together with Honda.

"We are already one step further than that, the working groups are working together. [We're looking at] different areas, exploring exchanging experiences, and doing simulation work together."

Having its own power unit can be a great advantage for a team in Formula One, but it can also be a disadvantage if the engine produced fails to deliver similar perfromance to the top teams like Mercedes or Ferrari.

Alpine struggled in 2023 with the performance of their engines, and the team got stuck in the midfield as a consequence. Aston Martin, therefore, has to ensure the smoothest possible collaboration with its engine manufacturing partner, Honda. Krack added:

"And then [we're] also updating each other: what is happening on the PU regulation side? What is happening on the chassis regulation side? Is there something that we need to drive in common? So, all these kind of stuff is going on at the moment."