17/03/2017
NEWS STORY
Amidst talk of McLaren seeking a new engine partner, Honda insists it remains 100% committed to F1 and the Woking team
In the wake of a clear improvement in 2016, thereby putting the nightmare of 2015 behind it, much was expected this year, possibly a challenge to Williams and Force India at the front of the midfield pack.
However, a nightmare pre-season test has seen Honda take a major step backwards, and facing a possible repeat of 2015 McLaren is being linked with Mercedes as the Woking team seeks to stop the rot.
However, despite the concerns, Honda boss Yusuke Hasegawa insists that his company remains 100% committed to McLaren and the sport.
"Of course the situation we find ourselves in is not what we hoped for when we returned to Formula 1," he told Motorsport.com, "but we are still 100 percent committed to our future in the sport and our relationship with McLaren.
"We believe in this partnership, as does McLaren," he continued, "and in order to move forward it is important for us to work as one team and overcome the situation together. The priority is to maintain honest and open communication, and to continue strengthening all relationships between Honda and McLaren despite the difficulties we are facing."
While Honda expected teething problems having built an all-new engine for this season, the various issues that arose in testing - including an oil tank that was too small - caught the Japanese manufacturer off-guard.
Nonetheless, Hasegawa insists that the issues are in the process of being resolved and already the Japanese manufacturer is looking at ways to increase power.
"Obviously the problems we had in Barcelona limited our track time and put added pressure on our pre-season preparations," he said, "however, we were still able to generate a huge amount of useful data, as did McLaren.
"Also, we were not dealing with lots of different problems, despite how it looked from the outside," he added. "Already while in Barcelona we were able to introduce some countermeasures and we proved the effectiveness of these during test two.
"In terms of performance, there is room for improvement with mapping before Melbourne in order to have better driveability. And at the same time we will continue to work on our development to generate more power from the PU."