Honda has been in the news lately after the Formula 1 power unit it developed for Aston Martin’s 2026 car has not been reliable. Aston Martin team principal Adrian Newey has broken his silence about the problem, suggesting how Honda may have prioritized solar panels over its F1 engine project.
The Japanese manufacturer parted ways with Red Bull Racing after the 2025 season and became the official power unit supplier for Aston Martin for the new era of regulations starting this year. However, the power unit has been having problems since testing began for the F1 teams.
Excessive vibrations from the engine have put Aston Martin on the back foot, compromising not only its pre-season testing in Bahrain but also the season opener in Australia, where Fernando Alonso retired the car mid-race.
Newey has identified the source of the problem within Honda. It all began when Honda quit F1 at the end of 2021 but returned again at the end of 2022. That one-year gap saw a majority of the workforce move to other projects, such as solar panels. The workforce that returned was largely new to F1. Explaining the challenge to the media in Melbourne, the Aston Martin chief said:
“A bit of history is important there. Honda pulled out at the end of 2021. They then re-entered the sport at the end of 2022, so over roughly a year, a year and a bit, out of competition.
“When they reformed, a lot of the original group had, it now transpires, disbanded and gone to work on solar panels or whatever, and so a lot of the group that reformed are actually fresh to Formula 1.
“They didn’t bring the experience that they had had previously.”
While Newey’s ‘solar panels’ comments proves his obvious frustration with the situation, it is largely a colloquialism for Honda’s broader green energy initiatives. When Honda officially withdrew from F1 at the end of 2021, the company stated it was reallocating its high-performance engineers to achieve corporate “carbon neutrality by 2050.” This meant shifting top motorsport talent to Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) and hydrogen fuel cell development, rather than actual solar panel manufacturing – a business Honda officially dissolved back in 2014.
Newey added that Aston Martin only got to know about the new workforce in November last year. He said:
“We only really became aware of it in November of last year when Lawrence, Andy Cowell and myself went to Tokyo to discuss rumours starting to suggest that their original target power they wouldn’t achieve for race one.
“Out of that came the fact that many of the original workforce had not returned when they restarted. So, no is the answer.”
Making matters worse for Honda was the budget cap, which was introduced in 2023. Newey added:
“Plus, when they came back in 2023, that was the first year of the budget cap introduction for engines.
“All their rivals had been developing away through 2021, 2022 with continuity, their existing team, and free of the budget cap.
“They re-entered with, let’s say only, I’m guessing, 30 per cent of their original team, and now in a budget cap era, so they started very much on the back foot and unfortunately, they’ve struggled to catch back up.”
Did Honda make a big mistake by diverting key talent to other projects when it quit F1, returning later with a fresh workforce instead of recalling its experienced staff?
