Fernando Alonso’s eighth-place finish in Malaysia carried two important messages for Aston Martin and Honda. The first concerned the competitiveness of the AMR26 on a circuit where the power unit played a less decisive role, highlighting the qualities of the Silverstone-built chassis. The second involved an intriguing Honda development: the ADUO2 turbo upgrade, designed primarily to improve driveability but also capable of delivering a secondary benefit in energy management.
Sepang offered a useful environment in which to assess those characteristics. Audi also demonstrated that the Malaysian circuit was less dependent on outright power unit performance, allowing Aston Martin to reach Q2 with both cars and ultimately secure valuable points with Fernando Alonso.
Fernando Alonso’s Sepang result highlights Aston Martin chassis strengths
There was another important factor in Aston Martin’s Malaysian performance: its competitiveness in wet conditions. With the MGU-K limited to 250 kW for every team until a certain point in the race, some of the AMR26’s difficulties with energy recovery became less significant because overall consumption was lower in those conditions.
That reduced the impact of some of the car’s limitations and allowed Aston Martin to operate in a more favourable environment.
Driveability is particularly important in wet conditions, and before the Sepang weekend it had emerged that Honda had unexpectedly introduced a second power unit update in Madrid. The original plan had been to homologate only one new specification at Zandvoort before postponing the more substantial developments until 2027, following an approach similar to Audi.
Honda identified driveability problems with its first ADUO update
Honda had already tested the updated power unit featuring ADUO1 during a filming day in Budapest before the summer break. The running provided useful data to analyse ahead of the specification’s competitive introduction from Zandvoort onwards.
However, during the very first weekend with the revised specification, the drivers reported difficulties with driveability, with the car becoming considerably more demanding to control.
Honda had, in fact, already anticipated that possibility. Both on the test bench and during the first on-track run at the Budapest filming day, the engineers had observed noticeably different driveability characteristics compared with the specification used at the beginning of the season.
That was considered a normal consequence of the changes. Altering combustion, as Honda had done with the ADUO specification, also changes the way the power unit delivers its performance and therefore affects how predictable it feels to the driver.
Zandvoort exposed Honda’s power delivery problem
At Zandvoort, the drivers noticed that the power unit could deliver too much power during downshifts. On some occasions this caused them to run deep into corners and miss the apex, while in others it made the rear of the car particularly unstable.
After analysing the data, Honda identified another opportunity for improvement through changes to the power unit’s turbocharger. The objective was to make the delivery characteristics more manageable for the drivers.
“After Zandvoort, we felt there was room to improve performance by working on the calibration,” Honda Trackside General Manager Shintaro Orihara explained at Sepang. “So we worked in that area to try to achieve an improvement through calibration. It is not a big step, but we continue to work to find small gains.”
Honda introduced its ADUO2 turbo in Madrid
Honda then took a further step with the second development opportunity, introducing an updated turbocharger in Madrid.
“Then, in Madrid, we introduced an updated turbo using ADUO2. We identified room for improvement in boost following, which primarily has an impact on driveability. That is why we introduced an updated turbocharger. We saw the effectiveness of the update in Baku, where boost following is particularly important.”
In practical terms, Honda worked on the turbocharger’s ability to maintain and modulate boost pressure quickly and consistently according to the driver’s demands.
The change provides benefits in two areas. The first is driveability, because the driver receives a more consistent and predictable response when requesting power. The second concerns energy management.
Why reducing turbo lag also saves MGU-K energy
The two issues are closely connected. If the turbocharger responds with a delay, the driver not only has greater difficulty predicting the behaviour of the car, but the power unit must also use additional energy to compensate and make the turbo operate more quickly.
It is a behaviour with similarities to the challenges encountered with previous generations of Formula 1 power units.
“If we have boost lag on corner exit, we can also have a delay in engine torque,” Shintaro Orihara added. “In that case we have to use the MGU-K to compensate for that torque delay, sacrificing some of the energy.”
Under the previous regulations, that was a relatively limited problem. The MGU-H could provide support and the MGU-K was limited to 120 kW, meaning the amount of energy involved was relatively small.
The situation has changed significantly. The electric motor is now operating at around 350 kW, almost three times the previous power level, while the MGU-H is no longer available to recover energy. At the same time, battery capacity has remained unchanged.
Energy is now more valuable on the straights
As a result, Formula 1 teams now have to think about electrical energy in a different way. The priority is to deploy as much of it as possible on the straights, where maintaining a higher level of electrical power for longer can deliver significantly more lap time under the current technical regulations.
That makes diverting substantial amounts of energy towards compensating for turbo lag less desirable than it was in the past. Improving the turbocharger’s response can therefore reduce the need for MGU-K assistance during acceleration and preserve more energy for areas where it produces a greater performance benefit.
Honda ADUO2 turbo delivers two connected benefits
Honda’s work on the turbocharger therefore has a dual effect. The original objective was to improve driveability and give the Aston Martin drivers a more predictable power delivery, but that improvement also produces a knock-on advantage in energy management.
Honda has stressed that the gains are not substantial. That is consistent with its development philosophy, under which the more significant interventions are planned for 2027.
Nevertheless, the ADUO2 turbo represents another small step in the right direction. Fernando Alonso’s eighth-place finish in Malaysia, combined with Aston Martin’s improved performance when the power unit limitations were less influential, offered another indication of how those incremental gains can contribute to a more competitive overall package.
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