MELBOURNE, March 6 (Reuters) - Aston Martin's hopes of racing in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix rest on their final batteries holding up until Sunday's race, leaving them feeling powerless and in a "scary place to be", team principal Adrian Newey said on Friday.
The Formula One team have been plagued by problems with their Honda power unit, with drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll having their laps restricted due to the risk of sustaining permanent nerve damage from vibrations in the car.
Twice world champion Alonso was unable to drive in the first free practice on Friday, while Stroll managed only three laps due to problems with the power unit.
The drivers combined for 31 laps in the second free practice session later in the day but the team's participation in the rest of the race weekend is on a knife-edge.
Newey said they brought four batteries to Melbourne but two had already failed, leaving only the ones left in the drivers' cars.
"So we lose one of those, then it's obviously a big problem," Newey told reporters.
"So we've got to be very careful on how we use the batteries.
"Given our kind of rate of battery damage, it's quite a scary place to be in."
Aston Martin also suffered a battery problem on the final day of pre-season testing in Bahrain last month, which compounded a critical shortage of laps and data before the season-opener in Melbourne.
Powered by Mercedes last season, Aston Martin finished seventh in the championship.
Honda withdrew from F1 in 2021 after providing a competitive power unit for Red Bull that helped Max Verstappen win the title but confirmed in 2023 they would return with Aston Martin this season.
Newey pinned the power unit problems on a lack of experience at Honda, saying only about 30% of their original team remained on board for the Aston Martin project.
He added that Aston Martin only became aware of the personnel issue in November.
Newey said the saga was affecting his whole team, noting that Aston Martin's mechanics had been up until four in the morning on Friday working on solutions.
"I think it's one where I kind of feel a bit powerless, because clearly we've got a very significant PU (power unit) problem, and our lack of running then also means, at the same time, we're not finding out about the car," he added.
"It just becomes a self-feeding problem.
"And of course, it's using a lot of energy in the human sense."
Alonso told F1 TV he was disappointed Aston Martin lacked spare batteries and that the team had not learned much from their limited practice runs.
"That was not needed again because we need to recover a little bit in terms of understanding the car as well and the window of where this car operates," he said.
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Sonali Paul and Peter Rutherford)
