Aston Martin in 'dire trouble' as F1 team face Australian GP unknowns

Martin Brundle has declared Aston Martin to be in "dire trouble" heading into this weekend's season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

The F1 team will be at Melbourne's Albert Park, although a question mark hangs over the Silverstone-based squad as to how much of the programme it will be able to complete.

The team suffered a dire pre-season of testing, culminating in major issues materialising with the Honda power unit that forced the AMR26 to grind to a halt on the penultimate day in Bahrain. On the final day, Lance Stroll managed just six in-and-out laps.

At the Japanese manufacturer's headquarters in Sakura, exhaustive tests discovered that vibrations within the PU were affecting the battery, leading to a warning that there would be no quick fix.

Full focus has naturally been on addressing the reliability issues. RacingNews365 understands that there remain many unknowns on the PU side when it comes to running the car.

The team is intent on learning all it can in Melbourne, obtaining data, and understanding if progress has been made by Honda on the problems. Apparently, there is optimism that improvements have been made.

Former F1 driver and Sky Sports F1 co-commentator Brundle, however, feels Aston Martin is facing major issues. The suggestion is that in qualifying, Stroll and team-mate Fernando Alonso will both be beyond the required 107% time.

"It’s clear to me that the correlation between the wind tunnel – the digital wind tunnel, the CFD – and the stopwatch on the racetrack, it looks like it’s miles out, because the car didn’t exactly look stuck to the road when it was running.

"Honda was pulling out, they came back in. They seemed a long way behind on battery recovery – on the power recovery – and reliability, they’re churning through their cost cap on the motor side already, and with parts and batteries...

"The big problem they have is that four teams were charging around with the Mercedes power unit. Can you imagine, after nine days of testing, how much data Mercedes has?

"Ferrari has three teams out there. Audi has done well, but they’ve only got themselves, and Honda has only got Aston Martin. So if the Aston Martin is not going around the track, which it wasn’t, by and large, they’ve got nil data.

"It’s a snowball effect for them, and they’re in dire trouble.

"I’m sure they’ve got the resource and the brain power to do something about that. But it’s going to take some time."