Ahead of a rather dubious 'anniversary', Honda insists that progress is being made.

Other than Adrin Newey's precise role and whether Jonathan Wheatley is about to come on board, Aston Martin still has to sort out the little matter of its engine and those bad vibrations.

In China, even 'ever the Samurai' Fernando Alonso had to call it a day, when the vibrations became so bad that he had to keep taking his hands off the steering wheel, bad enough in the Asda car park, absolutely lethal at 180 mph while battling Cadillacs.

Speaking ahead of his home race, Honda's Trackside General Manager and Chief Engineer, Shintaro Orihara insists that progress is being made.

"In China, we made some progress in terms of battery reliability thanks to a reduction in the vibration affecting the systems," he told reporters. "But we must find more solutions to establish the cause of the vibrations affecting the drivers.

"We have also focused our efforts in the gap between China and Japan to continue to improve our reliability," he added, "but still our performance is not where we want it to be, especially regarding energy management.

"Suzuka Circuit is a tough track for this, so we have been using the learnings from Australia and China to prepare better for the Japanese Grand Prix.

"We are not at the level where we wanted to be going into this weekend," he admitted, "but we will keep working hard to maximise our package.

"We are looking forward to seeing the home crowd and the Honda fans. I want them to see that we have made some progress since Bahrain."

As for that 'anniversary'...

It was at Suzuka back in 2015, while driving the infamous McLaren-Honda, that Alonso famously declared "GP2 engine... GP2!"

Honda will be praying there are no repeats this weekend.