--- title: "Inside Honda’s Shaky Return to F1: Racing Boss Watanabe Talks Vibrations, Tense Meetings, What’s Next" date: "2026-08-20" modified: "2026-08-20" authors: - name: "Jerry Perez" job_title: "Deputy Editor" link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/jerry-perez" url: "https://www.thedrive.com/news/inside-hondas-shaky-return-to-f1-racing-boss-watanabe-talks-vibrations-tense-meetings-whats-next" categories: - "F1" - "News" - "Racing" --- # Inside Honda’s Shaky Return to F1: Racing Boss Watanabe Talks Vibrations, Tense Meetings, What’s Next ![aston martin honda]() *\HRC\* [Aston Martin]() should be well poised to fight for midfield positions during this weekend's [Formula 1]() Dutch Grand Prix, something that just a race or two ago would've sounded comical. The hefty [16-part aero update]() the team rolled out ahead of the summer break represented a huge step forward and delivered near-instant results, with Lance Stroll and Fernando [Alonso]() securing 13th and 14th in Hungary. It's Honda's turn to shine now, with the long-awaited "Spec 2" power unit making its first public appearance in the AMR26 at Zandvoort. Needless to say, there is an awful lot riding on this. The heavily revised PU marks the first of two ADUO revisions granted by the [FIA]() for 2026. ADUO stands for "Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities," and it's given to manufacturers that are more than 4% behind the leader in performance. The Spec 2 [features]() a new pre-chamber to accelerate combustion, a new piston shape to improve combustion, and modified lubrication systems to reduce friction. ![SPIELBERG, AUSTRIA - JUNE 26: Lance Stroll of Canada driving the (18) Aston Martin F1 Team AMR26 Honda in the Pitlane during practice ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Austria at Red Bull Ring on June 26, 2026 in Spielberg, Austria. (Photo by Pauline Ballet - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)]() **Pauline Ballet via Getty** But while hope within the Silverstone and Sakura organizations is starting to trend upward, things haven't always been this way. It's been a long and hard journey since Honda announced its return as a full F1 PU manufacturer with Aston in 2023, but tensions peaked in Australia when both parties, along with the rest of the world, realized just how dire things were. At the helm of these two ships sit two well-known leaders who have steered their respective teams through the highest of highs, and, most recently, the lowest of lows. On the Aston side, there's Managing Technical Partner and Team Principal [Adrian Newey](). On the Honda side, President of Honda Racing Corporation [Koji Watanabe](). The duo has worked together for a decade and known each other even longer, but more importantly, each has contributed to the other's success—and not just once or twice. The former Red Bull and HRC partnership accumulated over 70 race wins and multiple constructors' and drivers' championships. In an exclusive interview with *The Drive*, Honda's Watanabe went into great detail about the team's timeline since the automaker's return to F1 was confirmed three years ago, and how and why things got off to a difficult start almost immediately. The man responsible for Honda's global racing efforts also talked about the "very tense and very serious" meetings that took place when [chaos reared its head]() during pre-season testing and the Australian Grand Prix. And lastly, how, despite Newey's backhanded public comments toward Aston's new works partner, everyone at Honda simply dusted themselves off and began working on a solution. ![MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 08: Adrian Newey, Team Principal of Aston Martin F1 Team and Lawrence Stroll, Owner of Aston Martin F1 Team in the Paddock prior to the F1 Grand Prix of Australia at Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit on March 08, 2026 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Joe Portlock/Getty Images)]() ![NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, ENG - JULY 06: Honda executives Koji Watanabe, President of Honda Racing Corporation, and Toshihiro Mibe, President & CEO of Honda Motor Corporation pose with Red Bull Racing Team Principal Christian Horner on the grid before the F1 Grand Prix of Great Britain on July 06, 2025 at Silverstone Circuit in Northampton, England. (Photo by Bob Kupbens/Icon Sportswire)]() ![SUZUKA, JAPAN - APRIL 06: Koji Watanabe, President of Honda Racing Corporation and Oracle Red Bull Racing and Honda team members celebrate with the trophy during the F1 Grand Prix of Japan at Suzuka Circuit on April 06, 2025 in Suzuka, Japan. (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)]() ## A Shaky Start "I will personally be there in Australia to make sure the car is good," Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe said while wagging his finger as he sat across the table from me during breakfast at the Mexican GP last October. He was in good spirits and had just finished answering a [quite direct question from me](): "How does it feel that when Lawrence Stroll needed a winning engine for his car, he called you?" He smiled and nodded. But while Red Bull was actively winning races with an HRC engine, the reality for Honda's F1 program in Japan was quite different. By that time, more than two years had passed since announcing its return as an F1 PU manufacturer with Aston, and it wasn't all smooth sailing. Unknown to the public, Honda had been struggling to secure the human resources needed to meet its workforce needs, and even worse, because of the FIA's strict implementation of the budget cap around 2026 spending, it was feeling the pinch years in advance. With a major deadline looming, tensions began to rise. **Jerry Perez: From the moment the return announcement was made until Honda actually got started working hands-on with the PU, about how much time went by?** **Koji Watanabe:** The announcement about Honda's return to F1 and its partnership with Aston Martin was made in May of 2023. Prior to making that announcement, the positioning of Honda was that it was a technical partner with Red Bull, and this was the basic involvement we had with F1, which means that, as a technical partner to them, we were manufacturing and supplying PUs and supporting the operation. We were not absolutely absent from F1, but were only involved in a limited capability or capacity. By the end of March 2022 \[when Honda stepped away as a PU manufacturer but continued supplying RBR\], we had already reassigned many of the engineers who had been participating in F1-related activities to other domains within the business, such as advanced technologies, environmental technologies, or even manufacturing. We had essentially returned \[or were in the process of returning\] these F1 engineers to other domains across the company when Honda announced once more its return to F1. So, we had to start rebuilding the team, which meant bringing in engineers from these various Honda groups or hiring new talent from outside—and we ended up spending a lot of time on this. Another aspect of reality we were facing at the same time was that the cost cap for the new 2026 regulations had already been applied in 2023. Rival teams had been doing preparation and development for 2026 all the way back in 2022 when there was no such cost cap. So, in contrast to what they were able to do, Honda was unable to benefit from it, creating a massive gap and making the situation more difficult for us. ![]() ![MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 05: Adrian Newey, Team Principal of Aston Martin F1 Team walks in the Paddock during previews ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Australia at Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit on March 05, 2026 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Joe Portlock/Getty Images)]() **In retrospect, do you think there was an opportunity to get a jump-start on recalling those engineers as soon as there was even a hint of Honda returning to F1, or was that not a possibility at all?** In retrospect, I suppose that we should have done something like that. However, F1 requires a large number of extremely talented and extremely capable engineers to make it even work at all. Gathering a team of such talent in such a short time was, realistically speaking, extremely difficult. The fact that we were not able to put together a team of these extremely able, highly capable engineers in an extremely short time is a responsibility that I and the rest of the management shoulder. And this is something that I look back on with great regret. **How up to date was Aston Martin leadership on these staffing setbacks, per se?** The basic communication structure we had with Aston Martin was very frequent communication. We were sharing everything that needed to be shared; nothing was hidden on our end. We communicated pretty much everything, including all the milestones and the various steps outlined in the development schedule. We did this collaboratively. ![HRC Group's chief engineer Shintaro Orihara is seen during the Formula 1 Japan Suzuka media day at the Suzuka Formula 1 circuit on March 26, 2025, in Suzuka, Japan. (Photo by Marcel van Dorst/EYE4IMAGES/NurPhoto via Getty Images)]() ![Mechanics work on the car of Formula 1 driver Fernando Alonso of the Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 Team during the Formula 1 Melbourne free practice and qualifying session at Albert Park in Melbourne, Australia, on March 7, 2025. (Photo by Marcel van Dorst / EYE4IMAGES/NurPhoto via Getty Images)]() ## Trouble Down Under “No, we weren’t," Newey [answered]() in March of this year, when asked if he was made aware of the state of Honda's F1 program when the deal was struck. “We only really became aware of it in November of last year \[2025\] when Lawrence, Andy Cowell, and I went to Tokyo to discuss rumors starting to suggest that the original target power they wouldn’t achieve for race one, and out of that came the fact that many of the original workforce had not returned when they restarted. So, no is the answer.” Reading that quote, along with [others]() from the car's February reveal, highlights how quickly things went sideways for the two companies between the AMR26's debut and the first race of the year. And despite Trackside Manager and Chief Engineer Shintaro Orihara's [recent comments ]()about Aston "never directing its frustration towards Honda," the optics were quite different leading up to the Japanese Grand Prix. **Jerry Perez:** **Fast forward to the first race in Australia. What was that first post-race meeting like, once the enormous problem at hand became very obvious? What was that conversation like?** **Koji Watanabe:** There were many issues at hand that we began to realize during the pre-testing rounds in Bahrain—not just specific to Australia. One such [problem was vibration](), so after the initial run in Australia, the meeting we had with Aston Martin was very, very serious and very tense. Ideally, our conversation at that time should've covered many other things, but because of this vibration issue, we were forced to focus solely on solving that. ![TOKYO, JAPAN - JANUARY 20: Executive Chairman of Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team Lawrence Stroll (L) shakes hands with Honda Motor Co. CEO Toshihiro Mibe during Honda x Aston Martin Aramco Formula One team launch on January 20, 2026 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Takashi Aoyama/Getty Images)]() ![Lawrence Stroll and Lance Stroll of Aston Martin Aramco during the Formula 1 pre-season testing at Sakhir Circuit in Sakhir, Bahrain on February 11, 2026. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto)]() *Jakub Porzycki* ![]() **It is now [known]() that some of these vibrations were already present in the 2025 \[Mercedes-AMG\] engine** **prior to Honda's involvement. At the time, was Honda told that this issue already existed pre-partnership?** During 2025, when we were still partnering with Red Bull, there were absolutely no vibration issues \[in that engine\]. So, at the start of the 2026 season, when we identified this major vibration issue, it came as a total surprise to us at Honda. Precisely because of that, there was initial confusion about the exact root cause of this vibration issue, and much time was consumed in the analysis phase. But because it was taking so much of our time, we had to focus on mitigating the phenomenon observed on the track. We needed to focus on reducing the vibration transmitted to the battery, as it was damaging it. All of our time was spent on that, and in the following rounds in China and Japan, rather than reducing the vibration being generated, we focused more on how to keep the vibration from reaching the battery. So we were trying to mitigate the transmissibility of the vibration to the battery. With the cancellation of the two rounds in the Middle East, we were able to really work on a countermeasure, which we ultimately deployed in Miami. **Do you believe that the vibration was 100% a Honda problem? And if the answer is no, can you tell me how much of it was an Aston problem and how much of it was a Honda problem?** I would like to start by saying that the source of vibration is, of course, the engine. But this vibration then passes through the car itself and is amplified, making the vibration levels much higher. I do believe that the responsibility for the \[source of this\] issue is 100% on the PU, but I will refrain from stating the percentage or breakdown of who's responsible for this vibration issue between Honda and Aston Martin. This is extremely difficult, and therefore, I will not really talk about that breakdown. \[Ultimately, it is\] very important for the PU side and chassis side to collaborate; it's not one side or the other. Because of this collaboration, we were able to make significant improvements and demonstrate that vibration levels in Miami have been greatly reduced. This is thanks not only to Honda but also to Aston Martin's efforts. ![Mechanics work on the car of Formula 1 driver Lance Stroll of the Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 Team during the Formula 1 Melbourne free practice and qualifying session at Albert Park in Melbourne, Australia, on March 7, 2025. (Photo by Marcel van Dorst / EYE4IMAGES/NurPhoto via Getty Images)]() ![MIAMI, FLORIDA - APRIL 30: Mechanics push the (18) Aston Martin F1 Team AMR26 Honda through the pit lane during previews ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Miami at Miami International Autodrome on April 30, 2026 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)]() **What was the internal reaction at HRC or Honda to how negative and blaming Aston Martin was towards its new partner?** I can say that, on Honda's side, we weren't too bothered and didn't take it personally. Honda's corporate culture is that if there are any issues, we take matters into our own hands and do our best to solve them, so the same attitude applied in this case. We didn't panic because of Aston Martin's attitude; we simply carried on with our work to work on the PU, as that was our primary focus. I can say that within Honda, our impression of Aston Martin's reaction was less worrisome than what people outside Honda might think. As you know, Honda, as well as HRC, have been involved in F1 for decades. We have had many partners with many teams. We have won various championships, and throughout this experience, we can say that in having these collaborations, it's most important to have trust and respect for the other side, and that this is mutual. This has been our attitude towards Aston Martin so far, and we'll continue to work with them while embracing these attitudes. **Do you believe that Aston Martin shares those same values towards you?** I think it would be necessary to have similar values, but this is not something that would happen overnight. When you have a partnership, this is essential for both parties to gain experience with the initiative. There might be hardships, or there might be tears of joy, but this is about the common experiences \[and values\] we share. This is what I'm hoping to see. ![MOGYOROD, HUNGARY - JULY 26: Fernando Alonso of Spain looks on while wearing an Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team kit, cap, and sunglasses on the drivers' parade truck before the Formula 1 AWS Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring on July 26, 2026 in Mogyorod, Hungary. (Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto)]() ![Honda logo on Aston Martin Aramco car of Lance Stroll during the Formula 1 pre-season testing at Sakhir Circuit in Sakhir, Bahrain on February 11, 2026. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto)]() ## Hitting the Reset Button Chief Engineer Orihara, who has become the public face of this difficult situation and is often plastered across HRC's social media during race weekends, appears rather hopeful about the new Spec 2 PU. He's also defended the automaker and team's approach to bringing bigger updates at longer intervals rather than many small ones more often. “We are excited to bring the new spec engine to the Netherlands, and we will see where we are," Orihara said on Wednesday ahead of this weekend's Dutch Grand Prix. “I can’t disclose that detailed number, but we have achieved our internal target, and I’m confident in what the HRC Sakura factory guys achieved for the Spec 2 engine." The new PU made its non-public debut during a filming day after the Hungarian GP, but that was more of a fitment test than anything, as pace and performance are heavily restricted during marketing activities. This Friday's practice session will be the first time the AMR26 and the Spec 2 motor have performed together at speed. Watanabe also wouldn't share any specific performance targets for the new PU during our interview, but highlighted that they weren't really able to focus on improving the car's performance until after Miami. After Aston's round of aero upgrades, however, there's confidence that Alonso and Stroll will be able to fight for points. One thing is for sure: Lawrence Stroll, Toshihiro Mibe, and just about the rest of the world will be watching. ![]() ![]() **Jerry Perez: A new B-spec car from Aston for Hungary, and a new engine from you in the Netherlands; in a perfect world, what would the combination of those two achieve?** **Koji Watanabe:** In the past, the vibration issue was so significant that we were forced to focus solely on countermeasures. But with those efforts, we were able to significantly mitigate the issue and make huge improvements. After that, we were able to return to what we originally wanted to discuss: the machine as a whole—chassis and PU together and the competitiveness that this package can or should achieve. We were able to have those discussions after Miami, and we set the targets, which led to these recent updates for Budapest and Zandvoort. So, you know, it wasn't until then that we had a discussion about the overall car. We should have discussed this all along, but we weren't able to. The next step was: if we carry out these tasks and implement them, what finishing position can we hope to achieve? We weren't thinking about jumping miles ahead, going for the podium, or fighting for the top spot. F1 is just too difficult a battleground. The goal we set for ourselves is to fight for the top 10 and to start winning points. If we can start getting into that area, and I cannot really share any numerical targets, but if we can start seeing that, I would say that we were able to meet the goals we set for these major updates. *Email the author at jerry@thedrive.com* ## Author Jerry is responsible for upholding The Drive's ethos as an audience-first, enthusiast-driven car blog that serves up industry-leading news, reviews, culture, and motorsport coverage. Overseeing a staff of writers and editors from his home base in Indianapolis, he helps curate the site's daily rundown, as well as its medium- and long-term content strategies. Jerry joined The Drive in 2018 as a writer and worked as news editor and managing editor before becoming the deputy in 2023. As a lifelong car enthusiast and racing fan, Jerry believes that all cars are cool, but the people behind the machines are even cooler. This belief often gives The Drive a slightly different focus from most other car sites, where we explore the humanity behind the machines. When he's not obsessing over the day's biggest stories or hanging out at a race track, Jerry can be found behind the wheel of a car, most likely sharing a laugh with his teenage son or daughter. ### Author social links [Instagram]()