Honda faces fresh reliability problem as Stroll retires in Brazil

Lance Stroll retired from the Brazilian Grand Prix after battery problems, marking Aston Martin and Honda's third retirement of the triple-header. It was his second consecutive DNF, and he has finished just six of the 20 races this season, while team-mate Fernando Alonso has had seven retirements.

Alonso had shown some encouragement, qualifying eighth in Brazil, the team's best qualifying result of the year, but Honda's lead trackside engineer Shintaro Orihara said the team knows what happened without yet knowing the root cause. He said it may take a few weeks to establish this, and a countermeasure is needed before the Las Vegas race.

Orihara said Honda needs to find the root cause before 2027, adding that otherwise the same issue will keep recurring. Reliability had been better in the middle of the season, but has since been replaced by several issues in recent races.