Japanese Grand Prix: Fernando Alonso will miss the media at Suzuka a day after giving birth to his first child

Alonso, who is in the final year of his contract with Aston Martin and has not said whether he wants to stay in Formula 1 beyond 2026, is not scheduled to take part in Friday’s first practice session.

The team’s reserve driver Jack Crawford will drive the car in one of the team’s scheduled rookie sessions this year.

Alonso insisted he had confidence in Honda to put things right but admitted he did not know how long it would take. This is the second time he has been on the receiving end of Honda being unprepared for a new relationship in Formula One, after three difficult years with McLaren in 2015-17.

Aston Martin has had a troubled start to the season as a result of major reliability and performance issues with the Honda engine, while the car is also late in development after its design started late.

The team is in last place in the world championship after two races, the worst possible start for its new manufacturing partnership with Honda, which won four drivers’ titles and two constructors’ titles with Red Bull from 2021 to 2024.

Alonso withdrew from both events in Australia and China, while teammate Lance Stroll retired in China and finished last in Melbourne, 15 laps behind the winner.

Honda’s first problem was severe vibration from the engine which led to battery failure.

Its engineers were working to isolate the battery, an important part of the hybrid system, from vibrations, but it still caused problems for the rest of the car – Alonso retired in China because gripping the steering wheel was too painful.

This came after team principal Adrian Newey said in the first race of the season that the vibrations were so bad that they risked permanently damaging the drivers’ nerves during the 25 laps of running.

The Japanese Grand Prix is ​​not only Honda’s home race, but is held at its Suzuka circuit, which was built on the orders of company founder Soichiro Honda in the 1960s.

“In China, we have made some progress in terms of battery reliability thanks to the reduction in vibrations affecting the systems, but we must find more solutions to determine the cause of the vibrations affecting drivers,” said Shintaro Orihara, Honda’s general manager and chief engineer.

“We have also focused our efforts in the China-Japan gap to further improve our reliability, but our performance is still not where we want it to be, especially in terms of power management.

“Suzuka is a tough track for that, so we’ve used the lessons learned from Australia and China to better prepare for the Japanese Grand Prix.

“We are not at the level we wanted to be at this weekend, but we will continue to work hard to maximize our group. We are looking forward to seeing the home crowd and the Honda fans. I want them to see that we have made some progress since Bahrain.” [testing]”.

Aside from the vibrations, Honda’s power unit is out of action from the internal combustion engine and electrical system, which cannot recover or deploy power at the full permitted rate of 350 kilowatts.

As for the car, team principal Adrian Newey admitted they started working on its design late after he started work on the team in March last year, but said he was confident it could become competitive as a chassis by the latter part of the season.