Honda chief gives date for when Aston Martin ‘improvement’ will be seen

Honda’s Trackside General Manager Shintaro Orihara has targeted the summer shutdown as a point when the power unit supplier will be able to make improvements to its engine.

The Honda PU is the slowest among the six competitors this season but overcoming that is a complicated process and one which cannot be solved in a matter of weeks.

Honda targets summer shutdown for improvements

Honda, and Aston Martin, have been in recovery mode pretty much ever since the first race as pre-season fears the engine would not work well with the chassis were proven correct.

It has left Aston, a team with title ambitions, rooted to the bottom of the Constructors’ as only they and new entry Cadillac have yet to score a point.

Both constructor and power unit supplier have been working to bounce back from the slow start but progress takes time and Orihara suggested post-summer break would be the first time the team was able to make significant changes.

“Engine development is long-term, but not end of this season,” he said in Canada. “Let’s say, summer shutdown, we will see some improvement.”

As to what improvement will be, Orihara also stated that combustion and friction were the two areas the power unit supplier most needed to focus on.

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“We know where we need to improve, for example, the combustion side. We need to improve the combustion,” he said. “We know how we improve the combustion, so we have some idea to improve combustion performance, and we have seen some positive signs on the dyno data.

“Also, let’s say, for example, friction. We need to reduce friction to improve performance, so that type of list we have now in the factory, and we have to keep working on to improve those things.

“Then, once we get something, then we will boost our development phase.”

There is also progress to be made on the chassis side and Aston’s Chief Trackside Officer Mike Krack said the team is not at “optimum with everything.”

“I think we can still make some steps on drivability,” he said. “We are not that perfect that we say ‘if we have one or two upgrades, we are optimum on everything’ so I think there’s a lot of work to still be done that we will do over the next weeks and months.

“I don’t think we are on optimum with everything on the car we have at the moment.”

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