Honda provide Aston Martin vibration update after 'useful' discovery

Honda trackside general manager and chief engineer Shintaro Orihara has shared that it has "obtained useful data" to help reduce the vibrations emenating from its power unit.

There is significant attention on the Japanese car giant at its home grand prix at Suzuka on account of the torrid beginning to its works team partnership with Aston Martin.

Not only is the power unit down on power, but the entire package is also slow and unreliable, with some of that due to the AMR26 chassis.

However, the battery is the epicentre of the problems that have plagued Silverstone-based squad since the start of the F1 season,

Further still, it is not a localised issue, with those vibrations causing discomfort for Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll.

At the campaign curtain raiser, team principal Adrian Newey admitted there were fears that getting anywhere close to a full grand prix distance could risk "permanent nerve damage" in the hands of the Aston Martin drivers.

Therefore, the battery and its vibrations have been a focal point over the opening rounds of the year. But Honda feels it is on the edge of a breakthrough at the Japanese Grand Prix.

"In free practice, we obtained useful data to know where we should go to reduce vibrations – not only for the battery system but also for the driver – so that was a useful day.

"We had a smooth session on both cars in FP1 and FP2, and we built up a lot of mileage, which is also a positive thing," Orihara explained.

Despite that good news, the AMR26 is still lacking pace, with Stroll and FP1 stand-in Jak Crawford comfortably slowest during the opening hour of running.

The situation improved during FP2, with Alonso ahead of Sergio Perez, but Aston Martin is still only able to compete with Cadillac.

Orihara added: "However, our pace is not where we want it to be, so we need to check the data overnight, and we also need to optimise this for tomorrow for FP3 and quali to try and find some pace."