1 hour ago
5
ARTICLE AD BOX
2 min readMar 5, 2026 10:18 PM IST
Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso of Spain poses for a portrait ahead of the Australian Formula One Grand Prix at Albert Park, in Melbourne, Australia, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo)
Aston Martin have announced that the team will limit the laps of their drivers in the first race of the upcoming Formula 1 season, the Australian Grand Prix. Why? To prevent their drivers suffering from nerve damage from the strong vibrations coming through the steering wheel of the vehicles!
Aston Martin team principal Adrian Newey said that the vibrations were so strong that the car was having issues like mirrors and tail lights falling off. Newey announced the decision on Thursday, with the season on the horizon. He pointed out that the fingers of the Aston Martin drivers, Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, had experienced plenty of vibrations that were being emitted by the power unit which was supplied to Aston Martin by Honda. The vibrations were travelling from the power unit to the chassis and then on the steering.
Newey said that Alonso had told the team that if he did more than 25 laps consecutively, he would risk permanent nerve damage to his hands. The younger of the two drivers, Stroll, had set the threshold to 15 laps!
“A significant problem with that is that that vibration is transmitted ultimately into the driver’s fingers. Fernando is of the feeling that he can’t do more than 25 laps consecutively before he will risk permanent nerve damage into his hands. Lance is of the opinion that he can’t do more than 15 laps before that threshold. We 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.”
“That vibration into the chassis is also causing a few reliability problems: mirrors falling off, tail lights falling off, all that sort of thing, which we are having to address,” Newey said.
Honda HRC president Koji Watanabe said they were working to solve the power unit issues. “I want to hurry up, but at this moment, it’s quite difficult to say when and how,” Watanabe said.
(With inputs from Reuters)
English (US) ·