Honda struggling to explain Lance Stroll’s 13th DNF of the season

Novembro 10, 2026 lojamais44@gmail.com

Honda says it needs to find the root cause of Lance Stroll’s multiple battery issues after yet another retirement for the Aston Martin Formula 1 driver in the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Stroll’s race in Sao Paulo ended after 30 laps, as he lay 18th, 28 seconds adrift of 12-placed team-mate Fernando Alonso. This marked his 13th retirement in the 2026 campaign – discounting the Melbourne race, where he did not complete enough laps to be classified but did not retire per se.

The Canadian was even more laconic than usual during his ever so brief appearance in the post-race media pen at Interlagos. “Battery issue,” he said of his retirement, before being asked how the AMR26 had been feeling up to that point. “It was alright,” he tersely replied. That was it.

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Fortunately, Honda trackside general manager and chief engineer Shintaro Orihara was somewhat more talkative in his media session, providing further details on the situation.

“Yesterday we had a battery issue on Lance’s car, and we had another battery issue today on Lance’s car, and at the moment, we know what happened, but we don’t know what is the root cause,” Orihara said. “So we will check the data and also we will check the battery, and it may take a few weeks to find the root cause.

“But from the data we need to find some countermeasure for next year and also we need find the actual root cause of this error for next year, otherwise we keep having the same issue, so this is quite important for us to understand what is the root cause.”

Lance Stroll, Aston Martin Racing

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

Those gremlins are reminiscent of – but likely unrelated to – the way engine vibrations repeatedly damaged batteries early this season, to the extent the AMR26 initially couldn’t complete a full race distance without breaks.

“Middle of season our reliability was better, and the last two or three races we had several issues, some issues not relating to mileage or just pushing, but recently especially battery issue; at this moment difficult to say relating to mileage or operation point, so first we need to understand what is the root cause,” Orihara said.

Meanwhile, the rain at Interlagos concealed the Honda-powered Aston Martin’s weaknesses, with Alonso driving it to the top 10 in all three qualifying segments. However, the two-time F1 world champion dropped out of the points on lap one and finished 12th, 20 seconds adrift of 10th-placed Nico Hulkenberg.

“Wet condition hides our weakness of engine performance and also some short deployment, but driveability is going to be quite important in wet condition,” Orihara explained.

“Still, we need to improve the drivability we found in this race and also qualifying; in some areas we see some positive things, but still we found the loop which should improve for next race and also next year.”