Honda take immediate action on F1 power unit after Aston Martin disaster

Honda F1 boss Shintaro Orihara has delivered some positive news for Aston Martin heading into the Brazilian Grand Prix weekend.

The struggling team had a dreadful weekend last time out in Mexico City, with both of their cars parked up inside five laps with matching engine problems – one halting out on track, and the other making it back to the pits.

That was attributed at the time to a cooling issue, something Orihara has revealed was only sort of the case, with Mexico City's high altitude playing a big role in causing the cooling circuit to be overloaded.

Orihara confirmed that Honda have 'implemented corrective measures' to right the issue, something which was perhaps given added urgency given that Interlagos is, after Mexico City, the second highest track above sea level on the calendar (albeit at around 800m to Mexico City's 2,200m).

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Honda boss: Altitude issues should be fixed

"Well, I can't go into specific technical details, but I'll give a general overview," Orihara said in Sao Paulo. "For example, in the race, we have the formation lap, which is a unique situation. In both qualifying and the race, we do a tire preparation lap. Although we do something similar in practice, the conditions are always different.

"In these special circumstances, our engine behaved somewhat anomalously, not as expected; this caused an overload in the ERS cooling circuit, which led to an MGU-K failure. This happened in both qualifying and the race due to the high altitude in Mexico."

On the specifics of the issues last weekend, he said: "Brazil, although not the same as Mexico, is also at a considerable altitude; therefore, we have implemented corrective measures – both at the hardware and software level – to improve our robustness in these conditions."

He added: "Actually, our problem wasn't directly related to traffic; while driving in clean air helps the power unit function, it wasn't the direct cause of the failure. When we talk about the cooling circuit , we are referring to something other than the cooling performance itself; it was simply a mechanical failure."

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