Aston Martin ended its F1 preseason testing two hours early Friday on the final day at the Bahrain International Circuit amid ongoing technical issues.
Lance Stroll completed just six laps Friday, suffering a heavy lock-up and an off-track excursion, before the team announced it was limiting runs while investigating the problems.
Friday’s shortened session follows multiple days of challenges for Aston Martin, which recently switched from Mercedes to a Honda engine supply, making them the only F1 team to use the Japanese power units.
Fernando Alonso’s Thursday afternoon session also was interrupted by a power unit problem, and the Adrian Newey-designed car spent four hours in the garage Wednesday due to a power unit issue.
“Our last run with Fernando Alonso yesterday showed a battery-related issue that impacted our test plan with the Aston Martin F1 team,” Honda announced via social media on Friday morning.
“Since then, we have been carrying out simulations on the test bench in HRC Sakura. Due to this and a shortage of power unit parts, we have adapted today’s run plan to be very limited and consist only of short stints.”
Aston Martin team representative and former F1 driver Pedro de La Rosa told F1 TV they are not where they wanted to be at this stage and that “there’s a lot of work to be done still behind the scenes” to prepare for the start of the season at the Melbourne Grand Prix in March.
“It’s a new set of regulations, everything is new. We have a new partner in Honda, new gearbox, new rear suspension. There’s so many things, actually, that we already have a very good understanding on, and we really know the places and the areas of the car we need to focus on,”
de La Rosa said.
“So, it’s not where we wanted to be. We would have preferred to do many more laps, but the amount of laps we have done is showing us a direction for the future.”
However, de La Rosa expressed confidence in the new partnership.
“But we have great partners, we have Honda. We have a fantastic campus and people working flat-out, trying to get us to the best possible compromise for Australia,” de La Rosa said.
–Field Level Media
