All of a sudden, Aston Martin looks like a different team. Fernando Alonso’s outfit has linked two consecutive races, Malaysia and Singapore, with a performance radically different from what we had been seeing in the previous Grands Prix. Now Honda has revealed the mystery of what had changed in that car.
Shintaro Orihara, the top Honda executive for Formula 1, has revealed that they introduced the second phase of their ADUO upgrades in Madrid, but chose not to make it public. They spent the next two Grands Prix experimenting with the new engine, which explains the drop in performance suffered by Alonso’s team.
Honda has introduced the second version of its ADUO
The Malaysian Grand Prix was an absolute surprise for Aston Martin’s followers. Not only did Fernando Alonso take advantage of the circumstances to score points, but Lance Stroll was surprisingly fast, even making it past Q1. Positive sensations that were confirmed a week later in Singapore.
A surge in performance that caught everyone off guard after a run of somewhat disappointing races, and with no changes announced to the car. Now Shintaro Orihara has revealed the mystery: Honda secretly introduced a new engine in Madrid that has started to bear fruit from the Malaysia race onward.
Orihara explains that “in Madrid we introduced an updated turbo using the ADUO2. We detected a margin for improvement that has a fundamental impact on handling. That is why we added an updated turbocharger. The effectiveness of the upgrade was verified in Baku, where ‘boost following’ is particularly important.”
Honda had already introduced a new engine in Zandvoort, but Orihara now says that “there we believed there was room to improve performance by adjusting the calibration. Therefore, we have worked on that aspect to try to achieve an improvement through calibration. It is not a major breakthrough, but we continue working to achieve small improvements.”
In any case, the performance surge in Malaysia and Singapore is not solely down to the engine. In Sepang, the low grip of the track benefited the Aston Martin chassis, which made the AMR26 shine, while the characteristics of Marina Bay are perfect for highlighting its strengths and concealing its weaknesses.
Surely, on the American tour Honda and Aston Martin will once again struggle on the straights, but the Japanese brand continues to introduce improvements, even if not all of them are communicated.
Images | Honda, Aston Martin
