Aston Martin's Honda-powered AMR26 has managed just three points through the first 13 rounds of the 2026 season.
Honda Racing Corporation has confirmed a leadership change at the top of its Formula 1 power unit program. Effective October 1, Tetsushi Kakuda steps down as Large Project Leader — Honda’s internal title for whoever runs the F1 engine effort — and Yoichiro Fukao takes over.
Honda’s official language calls it “a planned transition designed to ensure the reliable transfer of technical expertise to the next generation of engineers,” built to establish what the company describes as a more robust development framework heading into further regulatory changes due from 2027 onward. Notice what Honda didn’t say: nothing in the announcement ties the change to results.
Take that at exactly the value it’s worth. Aston Martin is tenth in the constructors’ championship with three points after the Spanish Grand Prix, roughly 500 points behind Mercedes with 402 still on the table across the remaining rounds. Manufacturers don’t typically reorganize the top engine job mid-season when things are going well, and Honda’s most recent engine upgrade for Aston Martin arrived in Madrid attached to a grid penalty rather than a step forward. Honda isn’t claiming 2026 has gone to plan. It’s just not drawing a straight line from the scoreboard to the reshuffle — and both things can be true: the optics are bad, and this can still be a genuine succession plan rather than a scapegoat exercise.
Fukao isn’t an outside hire brought in to shake the place up. He joined Honda in 2002 working on engine and gearbox control systems, spent time in the company’s MotoGP program, moved through hybrid powertrain development, then returned to the F1 project — where he’s already served as deputy project leader twice, in 2017 and again in 2022. Promoting the guy who’s already been the understudy on two separate occasions is what continuity looks like when a company wants it, not disruption.
The part of the release that actually explains the date is the reference to “further regulatory changes expected from 2027 onwards,” and those changes matter to an engine specialist more than almost anything else in the rulebook that’s governed this season. The FIA’s 2027-2028 power unit revisions, agreed in June and ratified by the World Motor Sport Council in Macau, rebalance how much of a car’s power comes from the internal combustion engine versus the MGU-K hybrid unit. The ICE/MGU-K split shifts from roughly 53/47 today to 58/42 in 2027 and 60/40 in 2028, with ICE output climbing to 420kW next season and 450kW the year after, while MGU-K peak power actually drops from 350kW to 300kW. The sport is dialing hybrid deployment back down and asking the combustion engine to carry more of the load again, a direct response to the energy-management problems that turned parts of the 2026 season into fuel-saving exercises instead of racing.
That’s a rulebook that rewards a company with Honda’s specific pedigree. Honda has been building race-winning internal combustion engines since the turbo era; the hybrid side of the current formula is the part it’s had to catch up on, using the same catch-up framework that let four manufacturers petition for mid-season power increases this year while locking Red Bull out of using it. Installing a career powertrain-controls engineer atop the program roughly fifteen months before the ICE-heavy 2027 rules land isn’t a coincidence anyone needs to confirm out loud — it’s a company lining up its organizational chart with where the rules are about to start rewarding it.
None of that fixes 2026. Aston Martin’s Honda problem hasn’t been one upgrade away from solved for months — it’s a season-long deficit in outright power and reliability, and a new name on the Large Project Leader title doesn’t change a single lap time between now and Fukao’s start date. Honda isn’t claiming otherwise. What the move tells you is where Honda thinks the return on its engineering investment actually sits, and it isn’t in rescuing a campaign that’s already 500 points off the pace.
What’s worth watching from here: whether Honda’s in-season development rate shifts at all before Fukao formally takes charge, and whether the change reaches beyond the org chart into the trackside engineering group before Aston Martin’s final rounds. The real test doesn’t arrive until next year, when the 58/42 split is live and there’s nowhere left for Honda to hide behind a transition period.
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