Honda make 'realistic' Miami prediction following Aston Martin tests

Honda has detailed the extensive tests it undertook ahead of the Miami Grand Prix to fix the serious vibration issue affecting Aston Martin. 

Ahead of the new season, Adrian Newey claimed that Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll were risking permanent nerve damage, due to the vibrations coming from the Honda power unit into the Aston Martin chassis. 

Through the use of countermeasures, Alonso was able to finish round three in Japan for the team's first of the year, having retired in China due to the vibrations, with Honda opting to keep a chassis in Japan following the Suzuka race to evaluate how it could "focus our efforts on reducing the vibrations and thus increasing reliability."

Whilst progress has been made, trackside general manager and chief engineer Shintaro Orihara has explained that it won't be seen on track during F1's return at the Miami GP.

"It has been a long but intense period between the races with lots of work happening in collaboration with Aston Martin in Japan and in the UK," Orihara explained.

"The Japanese Grand Prix showed that the work is going in the right direction and helped us to find the motivation to keep pushing forward. 

"After that race, we took the opportunity to keep one of the AMR26 cars on site for further static testing in Sakura for the first time, focusing our efforts on reducing the vibrations and thus increasing reliability. 

"We have made some progress, allowing us to implement further countermeasures in Miami and later in the season.

"Realistically, this progress will not have a visible impact on the power unit performance on track, so we shouldn’t be expecting big jumps forward here."