According to Autosport, the Mexico Grand Prix turned into an absolute disaster for Aston Martin Racing, as both cars managed a meager five laps before being forced into retirement by cooling issues. Taking place at high altitude, Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez proved to be an unforgiving beast for the power unit.
Shintaro Orihara, Honda’s trackside general manager and chief engineer, had already flagged the venue as a severe challenge ahead of the weekend. Yet the scale of the failure still shocks. Despite covering a whopping 144 laps across all three practice sessions—with Fernando Alonso finishing just 0.769s down on pacesetter Charles Leclerc in FP2—everything fell apart once the competitive sessions began.
Honda had managed to iron out some driveability and turbo lag issues between FP3 and qualifying. But Saturday afternoon brought abnormal signals on the water systems for Alonso, and both cars crashed out in Q1, sitting four tenths down on the Q2 cut-off time. Lance Stroll outqualified his teammate, but neither could survive the opening stages of Sunday's race.
Orihara explained that the ERS cooling circuit faced much heavier stress than anticipated due to the special high-altitude circumstances of Mexico City. Without the MGU-H to support the turbo in the new, simpler power units, the thin air exposed a brutal lack of preparation for the extreme conditions. "At each race this year, we need to learn for 2027, even the hard lessons," Orihara noted.
Frustration was palpable up and down the garage, though the Adrian Newey-designed machine genuinely possessed pace. Alonso pointed out that putting his quickest three sectors together on Sunday showed he was nearly as quick as Williams’ Carlos Sainz, despite running a heavy car with a full tank of fuel before pitting on lap three. Still, this marked the seventh retirement of the season for the Spaniard.
Aston Martin chief trackside officer Mike Krack admitted that keeping morale high is tough when struggling all year, though he has no doubts about the team's motivation. And if anyone is staying driven, it is Alonso, who insisted that every waking second of his life is focused on performing at his best behind the wheel.
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