Honda Racing Corporation President Koji Watanabe has addressed the company’s relationship with Fernando Alonso amid a disastrous start to its partnership with Aston Martin. The new Honda power units are reportedly neither reliable nor as powerful as those of the four rival engine manufacturers: Ford, Ferrari, Mercedes, and Audi.

They got into early and persistent trouble during the preseason tests in Bahrain. Lance Stroll complained that Aston Martin’s 2026 car was “four seconds slower” than rivals, and Fernando Alonso reportedly lost his cool in the garage, throwing his gloves after getting out of the car.

Moreover, the Honda power units couldn’t last the longer runs and broke down several times on the track. The theories were that either the engines were indeed inferior or that Adrian Newey’s radical design of the AMR26 forced Honda into a precarious position.

Either way, for Alonso, this produced a terrible déjà vu of the McLaren-Honda partnership from 2015 to 2017. The Japanese manufacturer’s inferior engines had drawn the wrath of the two-time F1 champion, who produced the “GP2 engines” rant.

This time around, HRC’s Koji Watanabe assures that they have a terrific relationship with Alonso despite the poor performance of the 2026 engines. In an interview with Spanish publication AS, Watanabe said:

“He’s an absolute competitor with an endless motivation to win. He’s a fierce competitor, and we’re happy and proud to be competing with Fernando. We know the start of the season hasn’t been what we wanted for either of us. But we want to write a good next chapter with Fernando.”

Despite the many issues, Alonso had kept a positive attitude heading into the season, which begins with the Australian GP this weekend from March 6 to 8.

Fernando Alonso’s Australian GP could end within a few laps because of Honda’s lack of reliability

A concerning report came out earlier this week that claimed Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll would be in for a bad time at the Australian GP. Motorsport Italy claimed that because of the lack of reliability of Honda engines, Aston Martin was considering withdrawing from the season opener.

However, the idea was dropped because of the disastrous consequences that the decision would produce on and off the track. Instead, the team decided that it would be business as usual in the practice sessions and qualifying, but the race would entail a different plan.

The report stated that Aston Martin would let its drivers run some laps in the race before asking them to bring the cars back to the garage and retire them. If that were to happen, it means that Honda’s power units are in a very dire state.

It would be impossible for them to turn things around even by the end of the season. Considering Fernando Alonso, at 44, is in the twilight of his F1 career, that would mean tragedy.