Tag Archives: Honda

Fernando Alonso’s return to McLaren is one of the biggest stories of the 2015 season. Here’s what he has to say about the team and the new relationship with Honda.

McLaren has released pictures of the eagerly awaited MP4-30, the first car from the Woking team to feature a Honda power unit since 1992.

It’s also the first to feature the input of former Red Bull Racing aero chief Peter Prodromou, who rejoined the team late last year, and holds the title of chief engineer.

The other key players behind the new car include technical director Tim Goss, director of engineering Matt Morris, and director of design and development programmes, Neil Oatley.

Ron Dennis said: “McLaren-Honda is a partnership focused on performance, technology and innovation, and there’s no better example of that than the results achieved in our first collaboration in the 1980s and 1990s. I was Team Principal all those years ago and, while I don’t tend to like looking back to the past, our previous record of sustained success was certainly instrumental in creating the confidence to make the decision to partner with Honda again. Now, there’s real hunger to demonstrate the capabilities of the huge talent pool we share between us, and I’m totally committed to driving progress and achieving further success.
 
“Although our renewed alliance began again many months ago, the launch of the McLaren-Honda MP4-30 marks the start of a lengthy journey. We’ve come a long way already and, although there’s a lot of work to do before we can expect to repeat the level of success we enjoyed together 25-or-so years ago, it’s already clear that there’s enormous synergy and potential in our partnership, and I’m positive that, together, we’ll get to where we want to be: winning Grands Prix and eventually World Championships as McLaren-Honda.”

McLaren and Honda endured another tough day in Abu Dhabi as Stoffel Vandoorne completed only two laps, bringing the MP4-29H/1×1 test car’s official total up to five for the two-day test – without setting a flying lap time.

The car appeared to be ready to run at the start of the day before an electrical issue intervened. In the afternoon Vandoorne did an installation lap, but when he went out for a four-lap run the car shut down on track. The team was not able to get it out again before the end of the day.

Although the whole point of the Abu Dhabi test was to find problems before running begins again in Jerez in February clearly both parties were expecting to do at least some representative mileage. This week has been poor reward given the effort involved in building the test car, which was a brand new chassis – and which in theory will not be used again, assuming that the new MP-30 is ready for the first test in February.

The team does still have the opportunity to use the older car in the first test and spend a bit more time developing the definitive model before it actually runs.
The other downside of the lack of mileage is that the team may have been using the Honda test in part as a way of evaluating whether or not Vandoorne is ready for a 2015 race seat, although in theory the Belgian will do a second year of GP2.

“Although this looked like another difficult day, this is just part of the learning experience we expected when we took on the interim car programme,” said team boss Eric Boullier. “It’s useful to discover these issues pre-Christmas, as it allows us to deepen our understanding of the complex integration between power-unit, ancillaries and the car.

“And, to be honest, I’d rather be ironing out these problems here in Abu Dhabi, than discovering them in Jerez, next February.

“It’s definitely been a positive for both McLaren and Honda to conduct this test – there have been some troublesome issues, but we’ve made progress. We’ve also made an excellent start to the relationship – communication and interaction have been great, and you can really feel the positivity and sense of purpose in the garage. Any mileage we accrued this week would simply have been a bonus.”

Honda motorsport boss Yasuhisa Arai added: “In short, this was a tricky day. We encountered system start-up and data communication issues that prevented us from running as we’d planned.

“However, actually conducting testing at the track enabled us to understand the complexity of the system at a deeper level. We now know what is necessary to further develop the system, and we’ll work together with McLaren to be ready for the next test – at Jerez in February.”

McLaren has revealed that its interim Honda test car will appear at Silverstone tomorrow in the hands of Oliver Turvey, on a day that has been earmarked for filming.

Eric Boullier revealed some time ago that the interim MP4-29 would be given the ‘H’ designation.

The team said via Twitter: “Getting set for Silverstone tomorrow for a filming day. We’ll be parading the interim Honda-engined MP4-29H/1X1 & 2 classic McLaren-Hondas.”

Stoffel Vandoorne will be at Silvesrtone, but is only scheduled to drive the older cars.

The team is obviously now on course to run the car at the Abu Dhabi test on the Tuesday and Wednesday after the Grand Prix, although it remains to be seen who might drive there.