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You will know a good company and a good leader if they take responsibility.
Newey and Stroll just simply blaming Honda.....
Newey was there since last spring, Stroll a lot longer obviously.
This was their responsibility! They, as the leaders, should have had perfect info about the engine!
If they would have cared, they would have enough time to quickly change engine manufacturer.
Remember when RB won everything with Renault? Remember when they did not?
When they were winning they barely mentioned the superb Renault engine, and when they were slower, they blamed Renault for it.
Does this sound similar to you?
Bruh...
There is a very good reason why the Red Bull structure of Newey as the Chief Designer, with the commercial side and the Team Management under different leaders, worked well. We have heard on numerous occasions in the past that Newey does not have a great interest in or talent for wider team management. I fear AMR is now finding out why that is. They gave Newey unlimited power, and he used it to get rid of people who he decided were not good enough (i.e. nearly all of the technical leaders), bumped Andy Cowell to an ill-defined role as liaison with external vendors (including Honda), and proceeded to try and implement too many changes at once. We are seeing the results play out in real-time, and they are not good.
Also, Newey isn’t even sure how many of Hondas 2021 engineers group are now in the project. He is literally guessing, I quote, “I’m guessing 30%…”. Then he put all that in such way, that some (or a lot) people might even assume they didn’t even have enough work force, engineers working on the PU with 3 times less people than other manufacturers. I already saw such takes in some online discussions. Honda is famous for their large rotations of their engineers between F1 and other department, aren’t they? That has always been their point of pride that their F1 engines are designed by the same people essentially that make their road cars anyone can buy. Not sure how’s that shocking, even if true that 70% of their lower profile engineers came from other departments. For sure they are still absolutely capable, talented engineers chosen by Honda senior leaders not by chance. They are still Honda engineers. How many of Audi engineers that designed their brand new PU had F1 experience in the past and specifically worked on the previous gen. F1 engine? 3%?
Again, Newey behavior as a TP is shocking and completely unacceptable, especially at such early stage of relationships with [what was supposed to be] their key partner. That’s ridiculous to say it is not. He repeatedly keeps on throwing them under the bus doing his best to make sure they are being humiliated publicly. He is absolutely not helping the case to resolve by presenting all those details to the media, unless they have already decided to terminate these relationship. Not a good look either way.
Last edited by avantman on 06 Mar 2026, 19:09, edited 1 time in total.
Safe as in "run enough laps to potentially participate in Q1 and Q2"?
Nope.
We will see both drivers do 1 flying lap and then park the car, because most likely the cars will not be fast enough to make it out of Q1 in any case.
There is a very good reason why the Red Bull structure of Newey as the Chief Designer, with the commercial side and the Team Management under different leaders, worked well. We have heard on numerous occasions in the past that Newey does not have a great interest in or talent for wider team management. I fear AMR is now finding out why that is. They gave Newey unlimited power, and he used it to get rid of people who he decided were not good enough (i.e. nearly all of the technical leaders), bumped Andy Cowell to an ill-defined role as liaison with external vendors (including Honda), and proceeded to try and implement too many changes at once. We are seeing the results play out in real-time, and they are not good.
I am liking what Newey is going through. He jumped the ship from Red Bull at the most difficult time for Horner, which amplified forces against Horner, the man who built the entire eco system for Newey to succeed.
No bad outcome for AMR would surprise me.
Honda might decide to pre-empt any attempt by AMR to terminate the relationship by giving them a large compensation payout and abandoning all support after 3-4 more races.
AMR might fire Honda on the grounds of failure to meet performance targets. However, that would require them to have a Plan B. I am not sure what the current emergency PU supply rules are under the new regulations. Under the 2021-2025 rules, if Honda leaves, then Audi would be asked to supply AMR. However, I doubt that they have the capacity currently.
All this talk of changing suppliers mid season is science fiction. It's not remotely feasible in modern F1 where the lead time for engine manufacturing is many months. If Honda and Aston separate mid season the only realistic outcome is Aston withdraws from this year's championship under force majure and attempts to onboard either RBPT or Audi as an engine supplier for next season. If thats the only other option you might as well stick it out and hope for some sort of minimum viable product this season and decide on the 27 engine by the mid season break.
All this talk of changing suppliers mid season is science fiction. It's not remotely feasible in modern F1 where the lead time for engine manufacturing is many months. If Honda and Aston separate mid season the only realistic outcome is Aston withdraws from this year's championship under force majure and attempts to onboard either RBPT or Audi as an engine supplier for next season. If thats the only other option you might as well stick it out and hope for some sort of minimum viable product this season and decide on the 27 engine by the mid season break.
I very much doubt RBPT is even realistically an option. They will say they simply do not have extra manufacturing capabilities at this stage of the project. AUDI has no clients and is the only realistic option. I’d assume certainly they would not be too interested in doing their best for Aston Martin - direct rival brand for various luxury brands within Volkswagen group. Why would they want to make their rival look better? One of the principal points that made Honda Aston Martin relationship possible is that they are not competing in road car market.
There is already a 2-3 month lead time for any comprehensive fix from Honda, presumably because some of the required modified ICE components (crankshafts etc.) have long lead times. Despite what Honda and AMR may currently think about each other, it is going to be extremely difficult for them to divorce each other quickly.
1. Honda pulls out in 2021 when they're winning and then jumps back in 2023 so they're already a year behind and limited by engine budget cost cap that the others didn't have for 2021-2022 (Honda's fault)
2. Honda rips up that team that won with RB and sends them to other parts of the company, and this new team is 70% inexperienced to F1 (Honda's fault)
3. AMR decides they're going to become a works team including building their own gearbox for the first time, instead of going the Cadillac route and remaining a customer team until they have everything else together (AMR's fault)
4. AMR management doesn't find out about Honda's personnel issues until NOVEMEBER 2025 (AMR's fault)
5. Newey's late join + late wind tunnel (AMR's fault)
6. Newey's uncompromising design forcing Honda through redesigns (AMR's fault)
7. Honda not properly pushing back against those requests (Honda's fault)
8. Seems like no one was communicating or doing proper component/integration testing. They don't know where this vibration issue originates or how the vibrations are amplifying through the chassis hard enough to literally rip apart the battery. (everyone's fault)
9. Everyone is pointing fingers instead of acknowledging the fundamental issues within the organization and taking responsibility. (everyone's fault)
Holy sh*t this is actually worse than Williams 2019. At least that car *ran* and completed races.
Last edited by upsidedowntoast on 06 Mar 2026, 19:48, edited 2 times in total.
There is a very good reason why the Red Bull structure of Newey as the Chief Designer, with the commercial side and the Team Management under different leaders, worked well. We have heard on numerous occasions in the past that Newey does not have a great interest in or talent for wider team management. I fear AMR is now finding out why that is. They gave Newey unlimited power, and he used it to get rid of people who he decided were not good enough (i.e. nearly all of the technical leaders), bumped Andy Cowell to an ill-defined role as liaison with external vendors (including Honda), and proceeded to try and implement too many changes at once. We are seeing the results play out in real-time, and they are not good.
I am liking what Newey is going through. He jumped the ship from Red Bull at the most difficult time for Horner, which amplified forces against Horner, the man who built the entire eco system for Newey to succeed.
I am of the same opinion. While it's still early to actually confirm it, i think RBPT's first engine actually being decent has shown that Horner was the most important person in the Red Bull organization, what he was able to orchestrate is nothing short of amazing. Newey doesn't work (that well) without Horner.
I agree, the talk about changing suppliers is just the media blowing this up even more, it's already quite bad from both sides that this is happening, from Honda to not comunicate their situation and AM to not oversee and suport their partner they both have blame on this, having said this i think the point of who's to blame has been driven way to far at this point, what it needs to happen its to make the best they can from the place they are at: gather data for the potencial fixes and confirm the aero platform.
Vibrations are not an easy thing to fix nor detect as you can't know how the whole chasis is going to react to it, the way i see it is that even with all these limited runs and more than likely underpowered engine maps AM is 3.7 seconds away from the MCLs in qualy and 2.7 in race simulations (acording to simulation numbers given by Albert Fabrega on his YT channel), which is actually better than I was expecting, if they can get enough laps in they could get to know how their aero platform is working and work on that while Honda finds how to reduce or isolate the harmful vibrations.
And just as a personal comment, you don't have to agree or disagree with it, i think the media its making things worse than what they really are, its a dire situation? yes, is it dissapointing? yes, but that's it, lets move on from dissaster and see what the team does, they are at least running unlike testing, that means that they are understanding the situation.
F1 is about finding the limits of engineering and materials and find solutions, Honda is more than likely working flatout to get updated parts to mitigate this, at this point I very much doubt that AM is not going to help and make any changes they can to the engine bay/mounting points to help with these vibrations, lets see what happens in the next days and weeks.
They don't know where this vibration issue originates or how the vibrations are amplifying through the chassis hard enough to literally rip apart the battery.
Newey talked to the media today saying those vibrations came from Honda PU (meaning engine) and now it’s Hondas task to change balancers and dampeners to solve this. As if it was official. Interesting last thing we’ve heard from Honda (was it just yesterday?) - cause of abnormal vibrations hasn’t been determined yet, therefore they cannot know atm what do they have to fix.
That alone seems like complete mess….of the leadership.
