Honda has introduced “countermeasures” in an attempt to address the reliability issues it encountered with its Formulജa 1 engine after Red Bull suffered a double retirement at the Austrian Grand Prix.

🌄Red Bull drivers Max Verstappen and Alex Albon were both forced into retirement during F1’s season-opener last weekend at the Red Bull Ring after suffering unrelated electrical problems.

Verstappen retired from♎ second-place just 11𝓀 laps into the race after losing power in his Honda-powered RB16, while Albon also stopped in the closing stages following a coming together with Lewis Hamilton while battling for second.

Investigations into the issues started immediately and Honda has found what it hopes will prove a solution in the four-day gap between the first two ra🉐ces of the campaign in Austria.

Neither Honda powe🐼r unit on either car was found to be damaged and Verstappen and Albon will use the same engines again for this weekend’s Styrian Grജand Prix.

"The problems on the two Aston Martin Red Bull Racing cars in the last race were both electrical, but caused by differen🌠t issues," said Honda F1 technical director Toyoharu Tanabe.

"We have been analysi♉ng both these m🍎atters together with the teams and we have put countermeasures in place for this weekend.

"As our power units do not haveജ any damage caused by those issues, Max and Alex will use their same PUs this weekend. This weekℱend, we must aim to finish the race with all four cars and achieve a good result with them.

"It means that our data is up to ꦬdate and relevant, although one factor that could affect our work is the forecast for rain and even thunderstorms over the coming we🌳ekend.”

Red Bull heads into this weekend’s second round sitting bottom of the constr༒uctors’ table following its double DNF.

Verstappen said he is hopeful of having a stronger weekend at the second race in Spielberg after🍒 struggling to match Merce♋des for pace last time out.

“I feel good but of course the result was not what we wanted, which was to score a good amount of points and𝓡 fight for the win,” he explained.

“I 🔯was loꦗoking good for a podium which I thought was easily possible because it was basically between Mercedes and myself on raw pace.

“But thꦡen you also look at how the whole race panned out, we could have scored a good amount of points against Lewis but it is what it is, we can’t change it and now I’m looking forward to hopefully ha♊ving a more positive weekend.

“We were a bit down on pace compared to Mercedes in qualifying so we definitely need to close that gap😼 to fight them in that area rather than on strategy.

“Our pace is usually a bit better in the race than in quali but there is still quite a bit of work to do which the engineers are flat out on. We have ideas and the direction to 𝓡work on for this weekend so that’s positive.”