Reliability improvements coming for Honda, but don't expect performance leap in Miami

Honda will introduce further countermeasures to its vibration and reliability issues at the Miami Grand Prix, but has warned against an improvement in performance as a result.

Aston Martin’s season has been beset by reliability issues so far, with the team completing its first race distance at the Japanese Grand Prix before the April break in races. Honda was able to complete static testing with an Aston Martin car in Japan in the gap, but with the chassis uncompetitive and the power unit also down on performance, Honda’s trackside general manager and chief engineer Shintaro Orihara says a more reliable package is the primary target.

“It has been a long but intense period between the races with lots of work happening in collaboration with the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team both in Japan and in the UK,” Orihara said. “The Japanese Grand Prix showed that the work is going in the right direction and helped us to find the motivation to keep pushing forward.

“After that race, we took the opportunity to keep one of the AMR26 cars on site for further static testing in Sakura for the first time, focusing our efforts on reducing the vibrations and thus increasing reliability.

“We have made some progress, allowing us to implement further countermeasures in Miami and later in the season. Realistically, this progress will not have a visible impact on the power unit performance on track, so we shouldn’t be expecting big jumps forward here.”

Orihara also highlights the likely high temperatures in Miami as offering a further reliability challenge for power unit manufacturers this weekend.

“Miami is the first circuit on the 2026 calendar with lots of slow speed corners,” he said. “It is a unique track, having two long open-throttle sections, and several slow speed corners. This combination makes it interesting to find the car setting compromise.

“On the power unit side, it’s about improving drivability through the slow speed sector and optimizing energy management in this section is a key factor to maximize performance. Miami is also the first warm race weekend of the season so it’s paramount to keep the power unit temperatures under control under these new regulations.

“The Miami Grand Prix is a Sprint weekend which means we only have one practice session – albeit 90 minutes – to optimize all of the data settings under the new regulations and define the best cooling specifications ahead of Sprint qualifying, which makes FP1 here very important.”