Aston Martin’s 2027 Formula 1 prospects now depend less on one overruling horsepower gain and more on whether Honda can turn its first season together into usable data for strong development. Honda’s relationship with Aston Martin began as a works partnership in 2026, and the Dutch Grand Prix is the first race after the marque has revised its under-performing RA626H power unit.
Honda Racing Corporation Trackside General Manager and Chief Engineer Shintaro Orihara joined Honda in 2003, entered its F1 program in 2013, became power-unit chief engineer in 2023, and took on his current trackside responsibilities in 2025. Talking to Planet F1and other media on the Thursday of the Dutch Grand Prix, he outlines his expectations for the updated power unit and what its future looks like.
“The power unit works as expected on new chassis,” he confirmed.
The updated engine first ran in an Aston Martin AMR26 during a filming day at the Hungaroring on July 29, following the Hungarian Grand Prix. The race weekend before that featured a 16-piece upgrade package. Now, PU upgrades are following for Zandvoort on August 21–23. This will be Round 12 of F1 2026 season, and to make things a little more difficult, it will be a Sprint weekend with limited practice time.
Honda’s 2027 Plan Is Bigger Than A Single Grand PrixHonda’s changes focus on the 1.6-liter turbocharged combustion engine, including combustion-chamber components, pre-chamber design, piston geometry, and the associated lubricants. Under the 2026 regulations, there is an equal balance between ICE and electrical power, with the MGU-K now produces 350 kW instead of the previous 120 kW.
“I can’t explain how much gap we can reduce by updating, but in Formula 1, we should be realistic, so we can’t bring that massive update, but we believe we bring some good steps by this update,” Orihara explained. “So, we have some gap to complete that, but in Hungary, Aston Martin brings a big update, so we bugged less speed.
“Every 50 milliseconds or 100 milliseconds is very important to improve our position, and I believe our update can bring that type of improvement on lap times.
“When always we improve performance, we face a reliability issue. So, beginning of this development, we found something how to say challenging point for reliability.
“We took a long time to bring this engine to find the performance, and also to fix the reliability issue, so we have improved our reliability or durability before bringing the engine.
“So, our reliability, we achieved our internal target for reliability and also performance.”
Aston Martin was 2.034 seconds per lap off the pace in Hungary, with deficits above five seconds at Silverstone and Spa. Lance Stroll finished 13th there and Fernando Alonso 14th, although Alonso reached Q2 for the first time that season thanks to the upgrade package.
Aston Martin Has to Build MomentumThe revised unit is intended to move Aston Martin back toward the competitive midfield, not immediately turn it into a front-running team. Orihara identified the combustion engine as Honda’s biggest weakness, with these updates looking to recover small margins at a time.
“We have the development plan to improve performance for the future,” he explained. “We are not saying we’re going to be top competitor immediately, let’s say in Round 1 ’27, but we’ll bring some big steps.
“We are trying to bring big steps to ’27, and then for this event, an important point is this is part of development. So, if we confirm our direction is correct on track, that will give us some confidence our direction is correct.
“So, it’s quite important for us how this power unit works at Netherlands, not only in the performance side but also reliability side. That will give us some confidence for the direction is good.
“Then, we have some development plans for ’27 and ’28, but compared to that target for ’27, ’28, our target is to close and complete that step by step.”
The Dutch Grand Prix will show whether the work on the PU, the AMR26 chassis changes, and the reliability fixes are pointing in the same direction. The supposed return is supposed to arrive through 2027 and 2028, when incremental gains finally have something worthwhile to attach themselves to.
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