Honda has provided an update on the progress it has made with battery reliability ahead of its home Formula 1 race at the Japanese Grand Prix.

Aston Martin has endured a disastrous start to the 2026 season and finds itself last in the championship after two races, with a car that is badly off the pace, while Honda’s power unit is plagued with extreme vibration problems.

As well as being down on internal combustion power, energy recovery and deployment compared to its rival engine manufacturers, Honda has also been short on batteries.

A combination of the above issues has seen Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll fail to complete a grand prix distance at the opening two rounds in Australia and China. Stroll claimed that Suzuka would be tough “unless they [Honda] can find some magic in the next 10 days”.

Following the double-header to kick off the new season, Honda has been working hard to address its reliability woes in the two-week gap between races in China and Japan.

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While Honda believes it has managed to make “some progress” by successfully reducing the severity of the vibrations, it admits it is still yet to find a root cause for the problem.

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

“We have also focused our efforts in the gap between China and Japan to continue to improve our reliability, but still our performance is not where we want it to be, especially regarding energy management. Suzuka Circuit is a tough track for this, so we have been using the learnings from Australia and China to prepare better for the Japanese Grand Prix.

“We are not at the level where we wanted to be going into this weekend, but we will keep working hard to maximise our package. 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.”

Ahead of the second round in China, Aston Martin and Honda shut down repeated questions about the battery situation. 

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The build up to the Japanese Grand Prix has been dominated by talk of senior management changes at Aston Martin.

Team owner Lawrence Stroll is believed to have made Jonathan Wheatley, who suddenly left Audi with immediately effect last week, an offer to run the team under managing technical partner Adrian Newey.

Newey, who joined Aston Martin in March last year, has been acting as team principal since the Andy Cowell was moved into a different position following reports the pair clashed.

Cowell has recently been based in Japan to help engine partner Honda resolve the problems dogging its new power unit. 

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