No big leap expected: Honda temper Aston Martin Miami hopes

Honda F1 Trackside Manager Shintaro Orihara has warned that Aston Martin are unlikely to see any meaningful improvement at next weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, despite ongoing development work showing encouraging signs behind the scenes.

At a difficult early stage of the 2026 season, Aston Martin and Honda have been battling persistent issues with the AMR26 and its new power unit, most notably severe vibrations that have disrupted performance, making consistency across race weekends a major challenge.

Behind the scenes, however, Honda insists the effort to stabilise the package continues at pace. Orihara detailed an intensive spell of analysis and collaboration between the manufacturer and the team during the April break following Japan.

"It has been a long but intense period between the races with lots of work happening in collaboration with Aston Martin both in Japan and in the UK," Orihara explained.

"The Japanese Grand Prix showed that the work is going in the right direction and helped us to find the motivation to keep pushing forward.

“After that race, we took the opportunity to keep one of the AMR26 cars on site for further static testing in Sakura for the first time, focusing our efforts on reducing the vibrations and thus increasing reliability."

There has been measurable progress in isolation, but Orihara was careful to temper expectations about what that will mean on track in Miami.

"We have made some progress allowing us to implement further countermeasures in Miami and later in the season," the Honda boss claimed.

"Realistically, this progress will not have a visible impact on the power unit performance on track, so we shouldn't be expecting big jumps forward here."

Miami brings fresh complications

If Aston Martin needed any reminder of the challenge ahead, Miami’s layout and conditions add another layer of difficulty. A mix of long full-throttle sections and tight, slow-speed corners forces a compromise that the struggling package may find hard to resolve.

"Miami is the first circuit on the 2026 calendar with lots of slow-speed corners. It is a unique track, having two long open-throttle sections and several slow-speed corners,” Orihara explained.

“This combination makes it interesting to find the car setting compromise. On the power unit side, it's about improving driveability through the slow speed sector, and optimizing energy management in this section is a key factor to maximize performance."

In Florida, the heat will only amplify the pressure, unfortunately.

"Miami is also the first warm race weekend of the season, so it's paramount to keep the power unit temperatures under control under these new regulations,” Orihara added.

And with the Sprint format reducing preparation time to just one practice session, execution becomes even more fragile.

"The Miami Grand Prix is a Sprint weekend, which means we only have one practice session – albeit 90 minutes – to optimize all of the data settings under the new regulations and define the best cooling specifications ahead of Sprint qualifying, which makes FP1 here very important," the Japanese executive concluded.

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While Honda’s development direction is moving forward, Orihara’s message leaves little room for optimism in the short term.

The foundations are being rebuilt, but the visible rewards may still be some distance away – leaving Aston Martin to endure another weekend where patience, rather than performance gains, will be the defining theme.

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