While encouraged by Miami GP progress, Honda has ‘still a lot of room to improve’

Honda says it has a lot of room to improve the performance of its power unit after confirming progress with reliability at the Miami Grand Prix.

The race in the United States was the first time both Aston Martin cars had finished a grand prix this season, and followed both Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll seeing the checkered flag in the Sprint. Honda’s trackside general manager Shintaro Orihara says the work done to reduce vibrations has paid off so far, and will allow the Japanese manufacturer to focus more attention on other aspects of its 2026 power unit.

“After the Japanese Grand Prix, I mentioned HRC and Aston Martin worked very hard to bring countermeasures [to Miami],” Orihara said. “We confirmed that working well and also the drivers gave us positive comments. That is kind of good progress for Aston Martin and Honda.

“So, we have completed good race distance and also sprint race distance without any major reliability issue. That is good progress. Then the next focus point, we can focus on optimizing our data settings for energy management and also drivability. There is still a lot of room to improve for our power unit. That's the next step for us.”

Aston Martin did not bring any significant aerodynamic upgrades to its car in Miami, unlike many of the other teams on the grid, but chief trackside officer Mike Krack says its progress is being measured in different ways based on its current priorities.

“I think we have now seen over the last weeks and months – and it's not that long – the way we have made steps on the reliability and on the reduction of the vibration, on the improvement of drivability, I think we have already seen quite substantial upgrades so far,” Krack said. “And we have to continue to work on that line.

“I will not get drawn into ‘the next race,’ ‘the race after’ or whatever is going to come. But I think we have shown that we had a lot of problems when the season started, extraordinary problems, but I think the speed and the overall result [of working on them] was quite remarkable.

“So, I think we can count on getting more. But we also must acknowledge that there is a big gap to close. And this will not be the work of a minute.”