Martin Brundle reveals F1 team boss “at wit’s end” over reliability issues
Martin Brundle says one F1 team boss is growing increasingly frustrated about its reliability woes.
Martin Brundle has revealed that Aston Martin owner Lawrence Stroll is “at his wit’s end” about his Formula 1 team’s endless reliability problems this season.
Aston Martin’s miserable campaign continued at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix as Fernando Alonso dropped out of the points-paying positions following a brilliant qualifying and Lance Stroll suffered yet another retirement in 2026.
The Canadian dropped out of the rain-affected Interlagos race with a battery-related issue, marking the 13th time in 20 races that he has failed to see the chequered flag this year.
Stroll is now just one DNF away from equalling F1’s all-time record of 14 retirements in a single season, which was set by Andrea de Cesaris in 1986 and 1987 for Minardi and Brabham respectively. Rubens Barrichello also suffered the same amount of non-finishes with Stewart in 1997.
"We were talking to Lawrence Stroll, the boss, about it. He's at his wit's end, he doesn't know what to do about these endless reliability issues and non-finishes in the team,” Brundle said during Sky Sports F1’s coverage of the race in response to Stroll’s retirement.
"What are they going to do for next year? Have they got different ideas, different people to sort the problem out? Where the battery pack, the ERS, the energy recovery system and just the power deficit they've got. That's the problem Aston Martin have at the moment: Where do they go from here?”
Concerningly, Honda trackside general manager Shintaro Orihara admitted that Honda has not yet found the foot cause of the problem.
"We had another battery issue today on Lance's car. We know what happened, but we don't know what is the root cause,” Orihara conceded.
"We will check the data and also we will check the battery, and it may take a few weeks to find the root cause.
"But from the data we need to find some countermeasure for next year and also we need find the actual root cause of this error for next year, otherwise we keep having the same issue, so this is quite important for us to understand what is the root cause."
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