Aston Martin has 'very fragile' battery situation for Chinese GP

Aston Martin remains in a “fragile” state with its battery allocation for Formula 1’s Chinese Grand Prix, despite reliability progress being made on Honda’s dyno this week.

Technical problems that marred last weekend’s season-opener in Australia put two of its four available batteries out of action, and meant Aston Martin was left with no spares for the Melbourne event.

That situation is understood not to have improved for this weekend’s event in Shanghai, with Aston Martin shutting down questions on Thursday morning about whether or not extra batteries had arrived.

Chief trackside officer Mike Krack said in response to media questions about whether there were any spares available: “What is the point if we go on about the number of batteries?

“I don't think that this is something that we should try to insist on, insist on, and insist on.

“We have a situation that was disclosed in Melbourne, and I don't think that we should continue on this battery number discussion.”

But while the team was keeping tight-lipped on the matter, Lance Stroll all but admitted that things had not improved when he suggested that things remained on edge.

“I think it's very fragile the situation with the batteries,” said the Canadian.

“Probably someone knows the answer to that better than me.”

Honda itself also declined to confirm how many battery packs it had in play, but did suggest work was going on to repair those that were put out of action in Melbourne so it had some spares available.

“We can't say the exact number, but we are keep trying to repair the battery to get more spares” said Shintaro Orihara, Honda’s trackside general manager and chief engineer.

Orihara said that there were some positive signs coming from the work being done on the battery repairs.

“We saw some good progress in terms of repairing,” he said. “I can't say any detail point, but we are keeping working hard to repair the battery.

“So maybe we can repair battery, because that battery issue is not relating to vibration, just small things inside the battery.”

Dyno progress

While the battery situation remains on the edge, Honda does feel it is making progress in terms of reliability and dialling out the vibration issues that have overshadowed its early running.

Orihara added: “We have found some progress on the vibration situation, and then still we keep working hard to reduce vibration.

“We found something, another countermeasure, so maybe we can try something."
Improving the vibrations appears to be a two-step process though, with Honda battling issues with both the battery and the car itself.

“In the last event, we just focused to reduce the battery vibration,” said Orihara.

“So in that way, we haven't applied any countermeasure for car vibration. That is the next step after we fix the battery vibration. But we keep trying to understand where the vibration is coming from.”

The 'prime target' for now

The progress being made with the vibration issue has at least opened the door for Aston Martin to feel it can target the chequered flag in China this weekend.

Krack said: “I think we are in a better position than we were a week ago.

“As Ori-san said, our task is to continue with the learning exercise, to continue to work on reliability, because the only way that we can improve the performance is if we have a reliable car. And that has to be the prime target for now.”