F1 News: Honda boss shocked by Aston Martin disaster: 'Our pride was severely wounded'

Adrian Newey and Koji Watanabe are pictured together to an Aston Martin themed background — Photo: © IMAGO

Honda

Honda boss shocked by Aston Martin F1 disaster: 'Our pride was severely wounded'

Red faces all round at Honda

Graham Shaw Consultant Editor

Digital sports specialist running global brands for 30 years

Saturday 5 September 2026 21:43

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Honda Racing president Koji Watanabe says the Japanese giant's pride was "severely wounded" by the disastrous start to their F1 partnership with Aston Martin.

Honda have come in for severe criticism in the first half of the 2026 season with their new power unit causing major headaches for Adrian Newey and his team.

The first race of the season in Australia in March brought the stunning revelation from Newey that the PU delivered vibrations so bad that it risked permanent nerve damage for his drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll.

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Aston Martin effectively spent the first 10 races of the season as a laughing stock - so far from the lofty expectations that came with the hiring of Newey, F1's foremost design genius.

Now though things are starting to turn around with Newey's chassis massively improved on the back of a huge package of upgrades brought by the team at the Hungarian Grand Prix in July.

Now the focus is really on Honda to come to the party too, and they brought their first upgrade to that much-maligned power-unit at the Dutch Grand Prix. Despite driveability issues, Fernando Alonso was able to claim points with a terrific drive to P9.

Newey, Alonso and co are just starting to recover.

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Watanabe 'shocked' by miserable start to 2026

Watanabe spoke in depth about the embarrassment at Honda over what happened earlier in 2026 during an interview with Japanese outlet Autosport Web.

"Many people had high expectations of us, and we were shocked and our pride was severely wounded when we disappointed those expectations."

While the upgraded performance is expected to take Aston Martin a little closer to where they want to go, Watanabe admits there is still a mountain of work to be done and much progress to be made.

"Since the basic structure of Spec 2 is the same as Spec 1, it's merely an improved version of Spec 1. It hasn't reached a fundamental solution to achieve our goals. Therefore, the scope of what we can do with Spec 2 is somewhat limited.

Spec 2 engine is not a magical solution

"Introducing Spec 2 won't magically solve everything. Moreover, now that the season has started and the performance of our rivals has become clear, what we need to strive for is not the goals we set for ourselves, but to catch up with our leading rivals. There is still a lot to be done."

If Watanabe was shocked and his pride wounded by that first half of 2026, what about the Honda power brokers above him? He says Honda President Toshihiro Mibe is very much across the issues.

"He knows a lot about development, so he understands the difficulties and tough situations that can arise," said Watanabe.

"However, he is quite critical of how we approach and solve those problems. If we keep doing things the same way as before, we won't be able to catch up with our rivals.

"He gives us advice from a high-level perspective on what we are trying to change and how, which is very helpful."