Aston Martin admit Adrian Newey’s chassis is not ‘good’ in high-speed corners

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Aston Martin’s Mike Krack admits the team car still has some glaring flaws despite the overarching focus on engine suppliers Honda.

Fernando Alonso reached the chequered flag at the Japanese Grand Prix on Sunday, a positive milestone in the team’s miserable season. But Alonso still finished a lap down in a race that included a safety car, a sobering result.

Teammate Lance Stroll suffered another retirement after 30 laps, while Aston Martin locked out the back row in qualifying. Alonso was three-tenths slower than the Cadillac drivers and some 1.7 seconds shy of the time he needed to make Q2.

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Mike Krack acknowledges Aston Martin still have ‘a mountain to climb’ with 2026 car

Most of the blame for Aston Martin’s dire start has been directed at Honda, who have not delivered an international combustion engine or a battery at a competitive standard. They have spent the first three rounds trying to root out the vibrations that have forced Alonso to take his hands off the steering wheel.

The Honda power unit is lacking in output and reliability, but speaking to AS, chief trackside officer Mike Krack acknowledged that Aston Martin must also look at themselves.

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Adrian Newey’s chassis is overweight and its poor performance in high-speed corners is partly an aerodynamic issue. Aston Martin’s development will come in ‘giant steps’ rather than progressive evolution.

Krack said: “We see that we have to take giant steps. They aren’t small ones, like the ones we’ve taken with reliability. We’ll use this break to take the first step, but we have a mountain to climb.

“We’re not good at high-speed cornering and we’re not at the minimum weight. There are things we have to work hard on to move forward. If we solve that, at the same time, Honda isn’t where it wants to be either.”

Fernando Alonso wants to protect ’embarrassed’ Honda engineers

As reported by the same publication, Alonso embraced Honda motorsport chief Koji Watanabe on the Japanese GP grid. It’s possible that this was a gesture for the cameras, but that still makes it a valuable show of support.

Indeed, it was at Suzuka just over a decade ago that Alonso infamously called McLaren’s Honda power unit a ‘GP2 engine’. The 44-year-old’s tone is very different this year.

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While certain statements from Newey and Stroll may have, deliberately or otherwise, caused Honda some embarrassment, Alonso is ‘well aware’ that the team’s engineers have been ‘working tirelessly for weeks’.

He is confident that they understand the scale of the problem and doesn’t want to make their work even more difficult by piling on further pressure through the media. Perhaps, in that respect, he has learnt from his McLaren days.