MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) \u2014 Aston Martin has predicted it is unlikely to finish Formula 1’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix on Sunday without its drivers risking permanent nerve damage.<\/p>\n
Adrian Newey, the F1 car design great who\u2019s heading into his first race as Aston Martin\u2019s team principal, said Thursday the team’s Honda power unit causes vibrations which could damage the hands of drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll. <\/p>\n
Neither will likely be able to tolerate even half of the 58-lap race distance and the car’s race time will be \u201cvery heavily restricted\u201d until a solution is found, Newey added.<\/p>\n
Aston Martin had a poor preseason, often slower even than new team Cadillac and it logged the fewest laps of all 11 teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat vibration (transmitted from Honda\u2019s power unit) into the chassis is causing a few reliability problems,\u201d Newey said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMirrors falling off the car, tail lights falling off, that sort of thing, which we are having to address. But the much more significant problem with that is that that vibration is transmitted ultimately into the driver\u2019s fingers.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo Fernando is of the feeling that he can\u2019t do more than 25 laps consecutively before he will risk permanent nerve damage into his hands. Lance is of the opinion that he can\u2019t do more than 15 laps before that threshold.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to have to be very heavily restricted on how many laps we do in the race until we get on top of the source of the vibration \u2014 and to improve the vibration at source.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the long list of issues, Newey says the AMR26 car has tremendous potential as F1 starts a new era of regulations. <\/p>\n
He argued the chassis is F1\u2019s fifth best behind the expected top teams Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull and that, following an aggressive development program, has the potential to run at the front at some point in 2026.<\/p>\n
Alonso, though, is keeping the faith until Friday practice in Melbourne, where he believes fixes on the car might provide a sunnier outlook.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, it\u2019s just vibrating everything,\u201d the two-time F1 champion said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s not only for us. The car is struggling a little bit, so that\u2019s why we have some issues, some reliability problems that made our days slightly short.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince (preseason testing in) Bahrain, there were a couple of tests done and some of the solutions are implemented on the car now, so (I\u2019m) curious to see what (happens) tomorrow (and) if we can improve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Its disappointing performance has been variously attributed to a compressed design time due to late arrival, Honda\u2019s need to rebuild its research and development capabilities after leaving Red Bull, the challenge of producing a new in-house gearbox, and the team running a so-far unproven fuels partner in Aramco.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s the side effects that will likely sideline its cars early in Sunday\u2019s race at Albert Park.<\/p>\n
Cadillac driver Valtteri Bottas joked about Aston Martin\u2019s lack of form. Asked to pick title contenders, he listed Alonso and Stroll alongside Mercedes\u2019 George Russell — who\u2019s widely considered one of the favorites — and suggested Mercedes wouldn’t catch Aston Martin until the final race of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re going to beat Aston at the very end in Abu Dhabi,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
This story corrects Newey quote about Aston Martin having problems with \u201cmirrors falling off the car\u201d and not \u201coff the air.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP auto racing: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/auto-racing<\/p>\n
Stewart Bell, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) \u2014 Aston Martin has predicted it is unlikely to finish Formula 1’s season-opening Australian Grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-516157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}