Honda deliver fresh update over major vibration concern

Honda has expressed confidence that its power unit will be kinder to the Aston Martin car this weekend in Miami after early setbacks across the opening rounds.

The engine was prone to vibrations when operating at previous events, going as far as posing a risk to the driver's health.

Honda used the five-week break to study fixes for the issue, diving into the matter straight after the Japanese Grand Prix last month.

Aston Martin's chief trackside officer Mike Krack revealed the Silverstone-based squad left a car behind in Japan for Honda to use in its search for solutions.

“We had a couple of weeks due to the cancellation of the two Middle East events,” Krack said. 

“We have used the time together with Honda to further improve our package. 

“We left one car Sakura after the race in Japan to continue working on the issues we have.

“We come here with another package of countermeasures to improve our reliability, to improve our reliability, to improve the package.”

Having introduced remedies to the engine ahead of the sport's return in Miami, Honda is hopeful the package will prove to be a step forward.

“We did some static testing, to measure the vibration of the actual car,” said Honda trackside general manager Shintaro Orihara.

“And then we have applied some countermeasures to the car and check vibrations on the car.

“Also, we gathered a lot of data from the car, because in the factory we can put a lot on the sensors. 

“We gather all knowledge of HRC engineers. And then we found some good progress on vibration, we introduced the countermeasure to this event. 

“So we found good progress on vibration on the engine and battery side, and also we can see some good progress on the vibration for the driver. 

“So we are interested to see how that works here.”