Honda power units preventing Aston Martin from doing long runs

In the second session on Thursday, Fernando Alonso, who was on driving duty all day, parked the AMR26 on the side of the track and was never able to rejoin the action after that.

The writing was on the wall since the start of testing for Aston Martin, and what happened on Thursday represented another worrying sign for Honda and Aston Martin.

While the AMR26 appears to be an impressive piece of kit with all the Adrian Newey design touches on it, it will be pointless if it doesn't have a proper power unit to propel it.

As a result of the issues they faced on Thursday, Honda and Aston Martin have ruled out long runs on the final day.

Honda issued a statement saying: "Our last run with Fernando Alonso yesterday showed a battery-related issue that impacted our test plan with the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team.

"Since then, we have been carrying out simulations on the test bench in HRC Sakura. Due to this and a shortage of power unit parts, we have adapted today's run plan to be very limited and consist only of short stints."

"Yesterday we had some battery issues on Fernando Alonso's car. Honda is carrying out some testing," Team Director Pedro de la Rosa added. "Due to that and a shortage of parts, we will be doing limited runs today.

"They will be short and separated by half an hour to allow us to really look into the data and test things. We will not be doing long runs.

"We are not where we wanted to be. We have not done many laps but we have an enormous amount of data for Australia.

"There is a lot of work to be done behind the scenes but we have a direction. It is a long session and we have a mission to be completed," he concluded.

While Aston Martin are also facing chassis issues, those can always be sorted out with development, but with the power unit designs homologated, there is so much Honda can do.

So it is now basically crisis management between Honda and Aston Martin with Andy Cowell reportedly in Sakura working with the Japanese manufacturer's team.

Maybe the former Mercedes man can give Honda some tips on how to build a decent F1 power unit.

It is bewildering how Honda find themselves in such a situation again, especially with their previous experience when they joined McLaren in 2015 and did not recover until three or four years after that when they joined Red Bull.

Haven't they learned anything from that?

Aston Martin may be ruing the decision to ditch Mercedes and team up with Honda now...