Honda president Koji Watanabe has admitted that he knew Aston Martin were in danger after seeing ‘information’ from their rivals in pre-season.

As it became apparent during pre-season, 2026 has become somewhat of a write-off for Aston Martin’s efforts in F1.

Initially tipped to be a title candidate thanks to securing Adrian Newey’s signature last year, expectations fell well short as the AMR26 failed to see the chequered flag in the first two rounds of racing through reliability issues.

While it seems like they appear to be on an upward trajectory 17 rounds of racing later, the current campaign has been nothing short of a disaster for them.

Interestingly, Honda knew a storm was coming following the first few whisperings regarding the pace of Aston Martin’s rivals during pre-season.

Koji Watanabe knew Aston Martin were in danger after seeing rivals’ data in pre-season

A recent interview between Honda president Koji Watanabe and the Italian edition of Motorsport.com has shed more light on the Japanese brand’s catastrophic start to their collaboration with Aston Martin, which was marred by a multitude of drivability issues.

The interview begins by highlighting how Watanabe told journalists at a Honda event in Kyoto last year: “I’d like to make sure we don’t find ourselves too far behind right from the start.”

Of course, being far behind is exactly what transpired for Honda and Aston Martin at the beginning of the term.

Recently asked what Honda’s prospects were at the time of those words, Watanabe replied: “It’s difficult…… Regardless of whether they were accurate or not, we had information about our competitors, including rumours.

“Taking that into account, I didn’t think for a moment that we were in a comfortable position.”Even then, we were aware that we might be lagging behind in terms of power. However, it’s also true that I didn’t think such major problems would arise with regard to drivability.”

The most confusing aspect of Honda’s poor performance is when you consider Red Bull’s RB21 was competing for last year’s title, albeit under different tags. Still, it was a power unit conceived by the Sakura-based manufacturers.

Asked what happened year on year, Watanabe then answered: “I don’t know what the others did. But as far as we’re concerned, there was certainly the fact that we wanted to make a lot of changes.”

“We didn’t develop the engine based on the one used up to 2025; we created a new engine. I think that’s where we encountered several difficulties.”

“To achieve the target figures we’d set ourselves, we assessed whether it would be better to build on what we had up to 2025 or not. And so we carried out development starting from a completely new basis.”

There had also been reports that Red Bull had created a staffing problem for Honda during the development of their 2026 power unit.

Due to Honda’s expected departure from F1, the Austrian constructor ended up employing the majority of their powertrain experts. However, Honda U-turned not long after, but was left with a talent deficit as they looked to continue creating F1 engines.