Honda Committed to F1

[Bethonie Waring]

Honda is “100% committed” to its future in Formula One, and believes the engine manufacturer needs to work with McLaren as “one team”.

The comments follow reports that McLaren has been in discussions with Mercedes about switching engine suppliers, and Fernando Alonso’s comments after a frustrating pre-season testing.

Honda, though, has no intention of re-evaluating its partnership with McLaren.

“Of course the situation we find ourselves in is not what we hoped for when we returned to Formula One, but we are still 100% committed to our future in the sport and our relationship with McLaren,” Honda’s F1 chief Yusuke Hasegawa told motorsport.com.

“We believe in this partnership, as does McLaren, and in order to move forward it is important for us to work as one team, and overcome this 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.

“This is not a short-term project for us.”

Honda is confident they have fixed the reliability problems that plagued the team in testing. They are continuing with plans to improve drivability and extract more power from the engine before the Australian GP.

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How far do you think Honda will have improved by the Australian GP? Do you really think McLaren is committed to the McLaren Honda project? Let us know in the comments below!

 

[kedy89]

Perfect placement of links to the other 2 articles

 

[Terry Rock]

Time to get their 'head out' and make it so.
Three years should be more than sufficient time to understand how software interacts with their powerplant.

 

[Sky]

thats great, but is f1 committed to honda?

Plus look how things went last time a team wedged a merc engine into a car designed to take a honda.

 

[Blkout]

In my honest opinion, Honda are over their heads here. Current F1 engines are considerably more complex than Indycar where Honda has some success today. I know Honda had success in the past in F1 but those engines were a lot less complex. Honda has had three years now to come up with a competitive engine and still hasn't been able to come close.

 

[Deleted member 130869]

They're just waiting for Alonso to retire or change teams to suddenly develop a title contender.

 

[fortyfivekev]

The period when Japanese engineering was the best in the world has been over for quite a while now both on road and track. European (mostly German) companies took that crown back years ago.

Also, not sure how long their shareholders will allow them to keep wasting $100,000,000+ per year making themselves look like chumps. Very sad.