Aston Martin set clear Japanese GP target in key problem update

Honda is "confident" that both Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll will be able to finish the Japanese Grand Prix, from a battery reliability perspective.

At the previous round of the F1 season, at the Shanghai International Circuit, the former retired due to excessive vibrations in his Aston Martin — something that has plagued the team all campaign — and the latter had a problem with the battery in his AMR26, another recurring issue.

Heading into Honda's home event at Suzuka, Shintaro Orihara, the car giant's trackside general manager and chief engineer, provided an update on the battery situation to media, including RacingNews365.

"Again, I won't say any specific number, but we have confidence," he said, after neither party would divulge more detailed information at the Chinese Grand Prix.

That approach came after the revelation in Melbourne that the team was down to just two working batteries, which were the ones in the back of Alonso and Stroll's cars.

Honda located the root cause of the Canadian's retirement in Shanghai and has applied countermeasures.

Elaborating on the progress made on the battery side of things, Orihara added: "Yeah, so from a battery reliability viewpoint, we have made good progress through round one and round two.

"So, from a battery reliability viewpoint, we are confident to finish the race.

"And on top of that, last event, the problem — but not relating to the vibrations — is now a separate issue."

However, the situation surrounding the vibrations that forced the two-time F1 drivers' champion to end his afternoon early remains less clear.

Aston Martin chief trackside officer Mike Krack shared that the Silverstone-based squad and Honda have worked on "different measures for mitigating both on the hardware and also the driver side" of the problem, with steps in place that will be tested at Suzuka.

Nonetheless, the 54-year-old was clear on the aim for the weekend in Japan. When asked if finishing the race was realistic, he replied: "Yeah, I think so.

"I think you're right in pointing out that we did not finish [in China]. And any chance of scoring in the future, you have to finish first. That remains the objective.

"I think we made a small step in that direction in China, but not good enough. So the objective has to be to finish with both cars."