Honda happy with engine reliability and now focusing on performance
Motorsport chief Yasuhisa Arai aiming to close gap to the front before the end of the season
Thursday 9 July 2015 06:55, UK
Honda say they will focus on delivering more power during the second half of the season as they are now happy with the reliability of their engine.
The McLaren-Honda partnership has yielded just five points from the first nine races of 2015 and just once have both of the team's cars reached the chequered flag.
Unreliability has plagued both Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso, leading to them exceeding their engine allocations for the season before the midway point, but Honda chief motorsport officer Yasuhisa Arai says they are confident they have finally fixed their problems.
"Now we have the first half of the season finished and will look to make another step in the second half," Arai said.
"McLaren have a new aero package with the short nose and we will update our power unit for the second half of the season and get more competitive and chase down the front of the field."
Asked if that meant the focus was now on engine performance, Arai added: "Yes, more performance. The reliability is almost fixed, but everyday there are small problems that pop up, but our main concern was to finish. Now we turn to the power side to get more competitiveness."
Arai admits it has been a disappointing start to Honda's partnership with McLaren, but suggested the Japanese firm are not solely to blame.
"Of course we hoped and wished that we had more points, but we have to make more effort on both the chassis and power side because there is still a performance gap to the top teams," he said.
"So we have to make the effort and use the tokens and analyse the data to make a step up in the second half of the season."
Honda still have seven tokens remaining for development this season having spent two ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix and they are planning to spend them before the end of the campaign.
"We have many ideas to apply to the power unit to get more power and more reliability this season using the tokens," Arai revealed.
But when will those tokens be spent?
"It is kind of top secret," Arai said with a laugh.
