Ahead of his team's second season with Honda, McLaren boss Ron Dennis is hoping to spring some surprises.

When Honda announced it was returning to F1, and partnering with the team with which it previously achieved so much, much was made of the history of those legendary days of the late 80s, early 90s, when the pair took four successive titles with the likes of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna.

However, the first season of the reunion was, to put it mildly, an unparalleled disaster, and one which few at Woking or Sakura will want to look back on.

Following a promising pre-season, and ahead of the first round of a championship that could make or break the Woking team, Ron Dennis is optimistic, but refusing to make predictions.

"I am not about to make any outlandish predictions, and to be honest I am constantly being asked the same question," he told the official F1 website, "but, even so, I will answer it for you.

"More markedly than in many other fields of human endeavour, Formula One teams' performance relative to their competitors is notoriously hard to predict, not least because their target never stays still. Mercedes were the team to beat last year, and I am sure they will be strong again this season, but their principal rivals have been working extremely hard over the past few months in an effort to close the gap. The senior management of Mercedes would therefore be foolhardy indeed if they were to state publicly, now, that they expect to win the world championships for a third straight year, and that is why Niki and Toto are saying no such thing.

"We at McLaren-Honda will not be in the hunt for outright world championship glory in 2016," he admits, "but we expect to make good progress compared with 2015. We have been working 24-7 in Woking all winter, weekends as well as weekdays, nights as well as days, and our colleagues at Honda have also been burning the midnight oil in Sakura.

"Expenditure of effort does not guarantee success, of course, but you may rest assured that no Formula One team has been putting in more hours over the past few months than we have. At some point during the season, we will begin to spring a few surprises. Clearly, Honda's power unit was a significant contributor to our under-performance last season.

"Last season was always going to be a building year, since we were in the first year of a brand-new partnership. As we had expected, we learned a lot - and, if there were frustrations for all of us along the way, that too was only to be expected. But through it all, we began to work ever better with one another - technically, operationally and culturally - and by the end of the season the fruits of that multi-faceted evolution were clear to see.

"It has often been said before, and it will doubtless often be said again: in Formula One you are only as good as your last race. In Abu Dhabi last year, which is currently all Formula One teams' last race, the record books record McLaren's results as 12th (Button) and 17th (Alonso), which on the face of it is none too impressive. But Jenson's race was marred by rear-wing endplate damage caused by Valtteri Bottas's unsafe pit-stop release, and Fernando's afternoon was ruined by a drive-through penalty dealt him as a result of his car having made blameless contact with Pastor Maldonado's Lotus.

"And yet, that evening both Jenson and Fernando were very happy. Jenson described his race as 'probably my best of the year' and Fernando was equally delighted, aware that he had shown real pace in the closing stages, clocking a fastest race lap that had been bettered only by Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel.

"Yet, having said all that, we at McLaren are motivated by the relentless pursuit of excellence - and, in a Formula One context, that equates to Grand Prix wins and world championships. Our ambitions encompass achieving exactly that. I will not say when that will occur, so please do not try to trap me into doing so. But I will say that Honda are equally ambitious. Together, we will win. No company in the world makes more engines than Honda does. In addition to cars and bikes, Honda makes engines for generators, pumps, outboard-motor boats and a whole host of motorised horticultural tools. So when it comes to engines, believe me, they know how many beans make five. Moreover, their Formula One power unit is still in the relatively early stages of its gestation, compared with those of Mercedes and Ferrari especially, and its developmental curve will therefore remain steep for some time yet, which will trigger a series of horsepower increments over the coming weeks and months. And our chassis is already a very good one."

The team is expecting the imminent arrival of Volkswagen’s Director of Motorsport, Jost Capito, leading some to wonder how he will fit in alongside Eric Boullier and Jonathan Neale.

"Jost has not yet arrived," confirms Dennis, "but we expect him to take up his position with us some time in the not-too-distant future.

"He is a hugely capable and experienced individual, and he is driven by an astonishingly high level of ambition. I liked him as soon as he and I began to discuss the possibility of his joining McLaren, and I know he will be successful with us.

"Jonathan's new role - Chief Operating Officer of McLaren Technology Group - is one that he is naturally equipped for, having worked at British Aerospace (now BAe Systems), the giant British aerospace and defence corporation, for 10 years prior to joining McLaren in 2001. Remember: McLaren Technology Group is about more than just Formula One. In addition to McLaren Automotive - whose recently announced six-year expansion strategy will involve the launching of 15 new high-performance sports car models and the recruitment of 250 new staff, lifting annual car sales from its current level of 1600 to more like 3800, incidentally - McLaren Applied Technologies also has enormous potential. It is already a successful and profitable business, but Jonathan will play a key role in its rapid expansion, working closely with Ian Rhodes (McLaren Applied Technologies' Chief Executive Officer) and myself.

"Eric is an out-and-out racer. His job is to manage our race team during Grand Prix weekends. He does it extremely well. He is both able and passionate, and he gets things done. I am certain that he will work very well with Jost, when the time comes, and also with Jonathan, of course, whose new position will still include some operational responsibilities with regard to Formula One."

Asked if drivers Alonso and Button are "too old and too rich" to be sufficiently motivated, Dennis is adamant.

"No, absolutely not!" he replies. "In Fernando and Jenson, we have the best driver line-up in Formula One today, bar none. At 34 and 36 respectively, they are both in the prime of their lives. Furthermore, they are both extremely physically fit young men - and I use the word 'young' deliberately.

"Yes, they are experienced - supremely experienced in fact - and that supreme experience is a quality that will be both important and instrumental this year, as, together with Honda, we work systematically and logically towards improved competitiveness. Rich? They are financially well rewarded as a result of their great experience and ability. Hungry? Without a shadow of doubt, they are as hungry as ever."

With that in mind, might Stoffel Vandoorne suffer the same fate as Kevin Magnussen?

"Like Kevin, Stoffel is a very talented young racing driver, who has also benefited enormously from his time spent within the educative framework of the McLaren Young Driver Programme, which he joined just over three years ago.

"He won the GP2 championship in fine style last season - scoring seven great race wins - and he has grown in stature in recent years. He has always been intelligent, but to that intelligence he has recently added a level of wisdom unusual in one so young. And he is as physically fit as any racing driver in any race series in the world, including Formula One. This season he will race in the Super Formula series in Japan, as part of Honda-powered Docomo Team Dandelion Racing. Super Formula cars are fast and grippy, and Stoffel will be competing against ex-Formula One drivers such as Kamui Kobayashi, Kazuki Nakajima, Narain Karthikeyan and Andre Lotterer. He will fare well. His journey to Formula One has been mapped out very carefully, as is always the case with McLaren Young Driver Programme members, and we expect him to be ready in 2017."

Finally, asked about the failure to agree new regulations for 2017 and beyond, Dennis admits: "Formula One is a complex business - and I stress the word 'business' because a business is what it is.

"People tend to think of on-track rivalry when I talk about Formula One being ultra-competitive, but the fact is that it is ultra-competitive off-track as well. Commercially, for example, the competition for sponsors is fierce. And there are many other areas in which teams vie energetically to be number-one. So, no, what frustrates me is not so much the teams' failure to agree - because the matters about which we are still working to achieve consensus are complicated and involve a number of differing interests - but our apparent inability to keep such discussions private and confidential.

"Formula One is a business, as I say, but it also remains a truly fantastic sport. Having said that, equally, we all know that, without losing its hard-won pinnacle-of-motorsport status that constitutes a large measure of its core DNA, it must also allow itself to adapt to a modern world in which sports fans consume moving images on devices other than television sets in the corners of drawing rooms. So we must and will discuss how best to bring that change about - but, disappointing though it may be for journalists such as your good self, we should do it behind closed doors, without then blurting out what has been discussed to the first Dictaphone thrust under our noses immediately afterwards."