Shintaro Orihara, the brand's chief engineer, talks about the possibility of raising the performance of Alonso's engine for this weekend.

They want to finish the race with their two cars, the AMR26s of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, with certain reliability upgrades, especially to mitigate vibrations and so that the batteries go all the way, but performance is another matter. Even if they succeeded, they would still be a world, about three seconds per lap, of the fastest.

This is the reality at the Japanese GP for Honda. And its chief engineer, Shintaro Orihara, was sincere in his speech to the media on Thursday. "How to say it... we can't improve, we can't change the performance specifications, but we collected a lot of data in China, analysed it and took it to the simulator to improve our energy management strategy for this test, so we've applied it for Suzuka," he says of what they expect this weekend.

As for the batteries, a weak point as they broke since the Bahrain test, the coach said: "Again, I can't give any specific figures, but we are confident," he said.

It was a joint press conference, together with Mike Krack, head of AMR F1 operations, who spoke about those dreaded vibrations, with which Stroll says he could only go "halfway through the race", due to the physical impediment they pose. The Luxembourg engineer is confident that this can change: "We have worked together on different measures to mitigate both the hardware and the rider side, so there are measures in place that we obviously have to test here and then see how we are," he said.

And Orihara added his part of the analysis: "From the point of view of battery reliability, we made great progress in the first and second races. So, in terms of battery reliability, we are confident that we can now finish the race," he said. Then Stroll put a stick in the wheels of that theory.

"From a regulation point of view, if we need to implement any corrective measures for reliability, we can do so. It's hard to talk about a plan, but if we need it, we can do it. It's hard to say at the moment, we'll see it in Miami," he said about the future development of the engine, both in reliability and performance. (MARCA, 2026-03-26)