Aston Martin in 'scary place' as Adrian Newey issues critical update

Aston Martin team principal Adrian Newey has revealed the squad has eaten through half of its battery allocation at the Australian Grand Prix.

As a result, it now has just two batteries for the remainder of the race weekend in Melbourne - the ones currently fitted to the cars.

Aston Martin is lacking mileage ahead of the new season due to a major vibration issue from the Honda power unit, which is hindering the rest of the car components as well as posing a risk to driver health.

The Silverstone-based squad managed just three total laps across the first free practice session on Friday, with all coming via Lance Stroll as Fernando Alonso was ruled out of the session before it even got underway.

Newey has shed light on how thin Aston Martin's supply of spare parts is, as another battery failure will eliminate the driver from the rest of the weekend.

“The critical point is the number of batteries,” he told media including RacingNews365. 

“We came here with four batteries, we've had conditioning problems with two of those batteries.

“As we sit here today, we've only got two operational batteries. 

“Given our kind of rate of battery damage, it's quite a scary place to be in. 

“We're hopeful that we can get through the weekend and start two cars and so on and so forth. But it's very difficult to be concrete at the moment about that.”

When asked if it was possible to fly more batteries into Melbourne, Newey replied: “Unfortunately not, because there aren't any.”

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Adrian Newey feels 'powerless' over Aston Martin struggles

Aston Martin has by far the lowest mileage out of any team heading into the new campaign.

Honda's problems are so severe that it has not yet been able to run its power unit at maximum engine revs.

And as Newey explained, it is a double-edged sword situation, as the lack of running means it is unable to discover the abilities of the chassis.

“It's one where it kind of feels a bit powerless, because clearly we've got a very significant PU problem,” he said.

“Our lack of running then also means, at the same time, we're not finding out about the car.

“Our information on the car itself is very limited because we've done so little running, and particularly running at low fuel, because running at low fuel, fuel acts as a damper to the battery.

“Honda has limited us very much to how much low fuel running we can do. It just becomes a self-feeding problem. 

“It's using a lot of energy in the human sense, as opposed to the kilowatt sense, on our part, to try to work with Honda and to produce the best overall solution.

“Because we can turn around and say, 'that's not our problem' - but it is our problem, because ultimately, the car is the combination of chassis and PU.”