As Motorsport.com Italia reports, the Mexican Grand Prix turned into an absolute nightmare for Aston Martin, with both machines lasting a mere five laps before being parked in a double retirement caused by hybrid system overheating.
Before the wheels turned in anger, Honda's Shintaro Orihara had already pointed out that the venue at high altitude would place severe demands on the power unit. Yet nobody expected a complete collapse. Free practice had actually offered a glimmer of hope as the AMR26 completed 144 laps across all three sessions. Fernando Alonso even flashed some speed, landing just 0.769s away from Charles Leclerc's benchmark in FP2.
The problem is just that, apparently, we cannot do more than a certain number of laps with the engine.
Things unraveled once the competitive sessions began. Honda managed to smooth out some drivability and turbo lag issues between FP3 and qualifying, but Alonso encountered troubling hydraulic system signals on Saturday afternoon. Both drivers crashed out in Q1, missing the cutoff for Q2 by four tenths of a second, though Alonso still managed to outqualify Lance Stroll.
When Sunday arrived, the race lasted all of five laps for the pair. Orihara, serving as general manager trackside and chief engineer for Honda, explained the sudden halt after the race. The ERS cooling circuit faced far more stress than anticipated in the thin air of Mexico City, forcing the team to shut the cars down. Orihara also noted that without the MGU-H supporting the turbo in these simpler power units, the thin air compounded their struggles with turbo lag.
Stroll offered only brief, frustrated answers to the media by the end of the weekend. Alonso was more talkative, offering a blunt assessment of their machinery. “The car is very good,” the Spaniard said, before pointing out the obvious limitation. “The problem is just that, apparently, we cannot do more than a certain number of laps with the engine.” This marked the seventh retirement of the season for Alonso.
Mike Krack, chief trackside officer at Aston Martin, admitted that keeping morale intact is tough when results are hard to come by and reliability bites. Krack noted that after a brutal start to the year and a slight upward trend following upgrades and the ADUO, reliability has reared its ugly head again following different issues involving crashes in Texas. Even so, Krack insists the motivation inside the garage remains sky-high as they gather crucial lessons for 2027.
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