What ruined Honda's big F1 upgrade engine debut

The debut of Honda’s upgraded spec 2 Formula 1 engine proved to be a disappointment in sprint qualifying at the Dutch Grand Prix on paper.

Aston Martin duo Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso failed to make it out of SQ1 at the Dutch Grand Prix as the squad appeared to have made a step back from its promising Hungaroring weekend.

Stroll, who ended up 19th and six-tenths off making it to SQ2, was left struggling for answers about where he could have got more time from.

Alonso, who was 22nd and last after a first effort ended up with a big lock-up into Turn 1, suggested on team radio afterwards that Honda’s early-season vibration bugbear had returned.

“Huge vibrations on the straights,” he said. “And not from the tyres, eh....”

So, had Honda’s much-hyped, more powerful spec 2 engine fallen flat at the first hurdle? 

Not totally, but equally it has exposed that the improved power does not automatically translate to better laps yet.

The rear wing issue

Alonso's poor showing was quickly explained as not being down to a power unit problem.

Instead, it emerged – even though Alonso had not noticed it at the time – that his rear wing active aero had failed.

It meant that running down the straights, his rear wing had stayed closed in corner mode, which increased drag to reduce top speed. It also meant he burned through his battery pack quicker.

The end result was a 20km/h speed deficit compared to his best lap from practice into Turn 1 – and he was 2.3 seconds slower by the time he hit the apex.

A further two tenths were lost on the run between Turn 10 and 11, where he was 15km/h slower.

While it is not an exact science, if we take 2.5 seconds off Alonso’s laptime then he would have ended up in the mid 1m13.5s – which would have been easily enough to get through to SQ2.

But this comes with a caveat that team-mate Stroll did not have an SM problem and also did not make it out of Q1.

The SM issue had another impact on Alonso too, in that it pushed the car down more.

So, the ‘vibration’ experience that Alonso complained about on the radio may have been the result of the car grounding out and struggling as its rear got more loaded.

Sources suggest there had been no vibration issues during opening practice for Honda.

What does need sorting

While the reality of Honda’s showing did not match the laptimes delivered, it would be wrong to suggest that without the SM problem it would have been mission accomplished for Alonso, Honda and Aston Martin in continuing its push forward.

Both practice and qualifying had highlighted that there is still a mountain for Honda to climb when it comes to sorting out the driveability of the power unit.

The 2026 rules demand perfect performance under both acceleration and braking – with that corner entry phase particularly critical to maximising energy harvesting.

And this is an area where Honda has not yet got sorted with its spec 2 engine.

Alonso talked about the car pushing on as he slowed for turns, and it was this exact issue that triggered Alonso’s lock-up in SQ1 that derailed his first effort.

“When you brake and the throttle is open, it's difficult to stop the car,” he said.

Solving this requires a lot of detailed software tweaking and can take time - but that work was already starting in Japan on Friday night as Zandvoort closed up for the evening.

As Honda’s chief engineer Shintaro Orihara said on Friday night: “HRC Sakura will analyse the data overnight and perform dyno tests to optimise these parameters for the rest of the weekend.”

Having taken stock of things after getting out of the car, Alonso was certainly not as despondent about where things were with the spec 2 engine as he had seemed in the car.

“Free practice felt okay and I felt a step forward, I think it's very early days and probably a little bit immature, a little bit of the controls,” he said.

“It's a sprint weekend. On a normal weekend we had three practices to nail the package.”

Aston Martin and Honda will have another opportunity to nail it on Saturday afternoon, and hope to prove that the sprint qualifying showing was an anomaly rather than a sign that this is what their genuine performance is like.