Fernando Alonso Calls Out ‘Very Bad’ Honda Engine After Madrid Struggles

Fernando Alonso says the Honda power unit in the F1 Spanish GP was very bad, and it couldn’t recover due to the slowing he had to do for blue flags.

On the weekend where his future was a hot topic, Aston Martin’s Alonso noted that the Honda power unit was very bad during the F1 Spanish GP race at Madring. He felt it couldn’t recover from all the slowing that he had to do under blue flags.

Honda brought its first update under ADUO in Zandvoort, and since then they have been chipping along with a few bits. However, they haven’t made a drastic step on the performance side, as they are still behind in the pecking order, while highlighting that the chassis is a solid midfield runner.

With FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayemhinting at helping Aston Martin and Honda for Alonso to stay, the F1 Spanish GP comments don’t help the cause. The Japanese manufacturer recently announced a shuffle in its power unit management in the hope of quicker success.

Alonso Says Honda Engine Was Very Bad in F1 Spanish GP

“Yeah, the engine was very bad,” he said to media after the grand prix. “I think the boost control was yeah, difficult and I need a stall on the pit stops and with some of the blue flags as well, letting the people go and slowing down, the engine was struggling to recover after that, so I was losing a lot of time on the blue flags.

“So yeah, we need to analyse what happened there.” He was also carrying damage from an incident with Williams’ Carlos Sainz. It was also a learning grand prix for Alonso, as he spent time understanding deployment and energy usage for the most part.

Alonso Taking It Race-By-Race

He feels at this juncture they can only hope to score at selected events like they did in Zandvoort. “Yeah, let’s see, I think we need to go weekend by weekend if we have any possibility to score points like Zandvoort, we have to take it,” continued Alonso.

“But we know that it’s going to be difficult, but we need to keep learning. It was nothing to fight for [in Madrid], but we tried different things, different engine settings and deployment strategy in the last few laps, so to keep the learning process and it’s what we need to do in the rest of the season.”

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