Honda has reshuffled the leadership of its Formula 1 engine program after a slow start to its return to the sport this season. The Japanese manufacturer, which supported Red Bull and Max Verstappen to four world titles from 2021 to 2024, is now supplying engines to Aston Martin for the 2026 season. However, the partnership has struggled so far, with the team currently ranked 10th out of 11 in the constructors' championship. Their best result this season was ninth place for Fernando Alonso in the Dutch Grand Prix. On Monday, Honda announced that Yoichiro Fukao, previously the deputy leader of the project, would take over as the Large Project Leader of the F1 program, replacing Tetsushi Kakuda, who had been in charge of power-unit development this season. Honda stated that the change is part of a planned transition to ensure a smooth transfer of technical knowledge to the next generation of engineers. The company aims to build a strong development framework and deliver a more competitive engine by making the switch early. Honda introduced its first engine upgrade of the season at the Dutch Grand Prix, but the improvement was described as modest. Shintaro Orihara, head of trackside operations, noted that Honda saw a small performance gain, but it fell short of Aston Martin's expectations. The lack of progress is said to cost the team at least a second per lap, combining the performance losses from both the internal combustion engine and the electrical system. In 2026, F1 engines will be nearly equally powered by internal combustion and electrical components, making energy recovery efficiency a key factor in performance. Honda's struggles with its return to F1 are partly due to the complex path it took to restart the program. Honda had announced in 2020 that it would leave F1 at the end of 2021. While it continued to supply engines to Red Bull until the end of 2025, only a small team of engineers remained on the project. The rest were reassigned to other parts of the company. Development was frozen under F1 rules from 2021 to 2025, which kept Red Bull competitive during that time. When Honda decided to return to F1 officially in 2026, it began rebuilding its team but did not bring back the engineers who had created the successful 2021 engine. Instead, new engineers with no F1 experience were brought in. This season, Honda has started bringing back experienced engineers to speed up progress. For Alonso, this has been particularly tough, as he previously faced three uncompetitive years with Honda in 2015–2017 while driving for McLaren. Now, with his contract with Aston Martin expiring at the end of the season, Alonso has yet to decide whether he will continue in F1.