Thursday 13 December 2018 15:57, UK
Could fresh questions be asked about McLaren's role in the failure of their marriage to Honda if the Japanese manufacturer's testing reliability with Toro Rosso transfers into the new season?
That was a point up for discussion in the F1 Report: Development Special as the winter fortunes of Honda's old and new partners were compared and contrasted.
While McLaren, now powered by Renault, unexpectedly propped up the mileage charts in Barcelona despite their 2018 change of engine, Toro Rosso were third behind Mercedes and Ferrari with Honda only running into significant problems on the final day.
Former F1 technical director Mike Gascoyne, who worked with Honda while at Jordan in the late 1990s, noted the contrast.
"One of the big questions you've got to ask from testing is where suddenly they've gone from being so unreliable to being very reliable, were a load of those problems down to McLaren?" said Gascoyne.
"If they'd have had two teams last year would they have been able to sort that out much more quickly?
But what about Honda's performance?
While their early-2018 reliability produced rare positive headlines for the Japanese firm since their return to F1 three years ago, questions remain over the outright performance of their V6 hybrid compared to engine rivals Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault.
Sky F1's Ted Kravitz believes Honda still have plenty of work to do to catch up - but suspects the lower-key environment of Toro Rosso could prove the ideal platform from which to improve their fortunes.
"It's going to take a bit more time," he said.
"It's not a new engine, it's a development of last year's. They have made it more reliable but really the benefit for Toro Rosso is they are now with a works engine supplier. They've never had that before so they can dictate where the Honda engine goes into the future.
"What Honda will get with Toro Rosso is an easier ride, some no-nonsense engineering - they are the ex-Minardi team - and perhaps they don't have the over-complication of McLaren.
"So you'll get some basic nuts and bolts engineering and they will just get a nicer environment where the pressure is off.
"Alright, there years from now if they are not delivering with Toro Rosso the pressure will be back on, but right now the pressure is off and that can only be a good thing."
Meanwhile, while the MCL33 may not have been as reliable as McLaren wanted or expected across the eight days of testing, Gascoyne says Fernando Alonso's third-fastest test time on the final day at Barcelona gives the Woking team plenty of encouragement heading to next week's Australian GP.
"Given were they were with Honda and the public reliability problems they had, it's very easy to look at them now and say 'why aren't you more reliable?'" said Gascoyne.
"But the thing you've got to remember is any change of engine supplier is a big job. Changing to the Renault, it's a different type of installation and there's always going to be problems.
"They weren't as reliable as they wanted to be, some silly problems, but they also had performance at the end. And they'll be grateful and pleased they put that lap time in at the end.
