{"id":1808447,"date":"2026-03-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1808447"},"modified":"2026-03-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T21:00:00","slug":"mirrors-falling-off-nerve-damage-newey-reveals-scale-of-astons-f1-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1808447","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Mirrors falling off\u2019, \u2018nerve damage\u2019: Newey reveals scale of Aston\u2019s F1 problems"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Well this is pretty extraordinary: Aston Martin F1 team principal Adrian Newey<\/a> has revealed the team a) won\u2019t finish the Australian Grand Prix this weekend, and b) could cripple its drivers with \u201cpermanent nerve damage\u201d if it tried to. Good grief.<\/p>\n

Aston registered the lowest mileage of any of the 11 teams in pre-season testing because of severe vibrations caused by its Honda engine, which only Aston is running this season.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That vibration is causing all manner of problems, not least that the battery is being shaken about like one of James Bond\u2019s vodka martinis.<\/p>\n

A countermeasure is being fitted for this weekend\u2019s opening race in Melbourne, but the team has no idea if it\u2019ll work and it won\u2019t do a darn thing to protect Fernando Alonso or Lance Stroll in the cockpit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThat vibration into the chassis is causing a few reliability problems. Mirrors falling off, taillights falling off, all that sort of thing,\u201d Newey admitted. \u201cBut the much more significant problem with that is that vibration is transmitted ultimately into the drivers\u2019 fingers.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo Fernando is of the feeling that he can\u2019t do more than 25 laps consecutively before he will risk permanent nerve damage into his hands. Lance is of the opinion he can\u2019t do more than 15 laps before that threshold.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Blimey. Aston is also facing an uphill battle with an aero package that it knows isn\u2019t competitive yet, but that\u2019s being overshadowed by yet another major embarrassment for Honda, which appears to have dropped the ball for the second regulation overhaul in a row.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll remember the last one in 2014, when Honda entered a year behind everyone else, arrived underpowered and unreliable, and spent half a decade catching up while putting McLaren through the worst run of results in its entire history. As Fernando remembers only too well\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And on top of being the cause of a string of failures in winter testing (we\u2019re not calling it a \u2018shakedown\u2019 out of respect), Honda\u2019s powertrain is once again thought to be significantly down on power.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI think there\u2019s no point not being open and honest in this meeting of our expectations,\u201d continued Newey. \u201cWe are going to be very heavily restricted on how many laps we do in the race until we get on top of the source of the vibration, and improve the vibration at source.\u201d<\/p>\n

Double DNF incoming\u2026 sounds like it\u2019ll be the first of many.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well this is pretty extraordinary: Aston Martin F1 team principal Adrian Newey has revealed the team a) won\u2019t finish the Australian Grand Prix this weekend, and b) could cripple its drivers with \u201cpermanent nerve damage\u201d if it tried to. Good grief. Aston registered the lowest mileage of any of the 11 teams in pre-season testing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-1808447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1808447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1808447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1808447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1808447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1808447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1808447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}