Honda address Aston Martin 'misunderstanding' after worrying Adrian Newey claim

Honda boss Koji Watanabe has cleared up a misunderstanding between it and Aston Martin, raised by Adrian Newey.

In Melbourne, Newey claimed that Aston Martin had been unaware until November 2025 that some personnel involved in Honda's last works F1 project with Red Bull and AlphaTauri were no longer involved as the Japanese manufacturer returned to grand prix racing.

At the time of its formal withdrawal in 2021, Honda was focused on carbon-neutral technologies, with some techincal figures moving onto such projects within Honda, with the Aston Martin-Honda deal announced ahead of the 2023 season.

So far, the new partnership has endured a troubled start with vibrations affecting the ability of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll to complete races, although Alonso did finish the Japanese GP last time out.

Addressing the situation, Watanabe cleared up what exactly had happened.

"Yes, basically I think that it’s a misunderstanding," Watanabe told media, including RacingNews365. 

"Basically, our policy is to rotate the engineers of the motorsport regularly to mass production or more advanced technologies like jet, eVTOL, hydrology or something like that. 

"So that is, we continue to rotate from the beginning. Probably my explanation is not enough. Also, of course, as I said, to rebuild the organisation took a bit of time, so that was his worry, I think. 

"But now we have sufficient organisation and talent.

|The relationship between Aston Martin and Honda is quite good. So, between the actual development team, like in the case of Honda, [Tetsushi] Kakuda is the project leader of the power unit, and also Enrico [Cardile] on the Aston Martin side, they work closely together. 

"Also, [Lawrence] Stroll and I, myself and Adrian Newey, have quite good relations, so I have no worry about that."