New Honda F1 boss Yusuke Hasegawa says the engine supplier made steady progress during pre-season testing, ahead of the first 2016 race in Australia on the 20 March.
McLaren completed 707 laps during winter testing in Spain, a considerable improvement over the number of laps the team’s 2015 car managed.
Hasegawa, who took over from Yasuhisa Arai ahead of the new season, believes Honda needs to keep pushing hard to score points.
"The two weeks of testing here in Barcelona have been generally good for us, as we were able to confirm the improvements in reliability, deployment and engine performance that we focused on during the off-season," he said.
"Especially in the second test, the fact that we ran the power unit without any issues for four days straight is a good result for us.
"We still need to perform final checks and preparation for reliability on the dyno, and finalise the power unit data, but we have surely and steadily progressed in our preparation for Melbourne.
"It is difficult to determine the outright performance of the whole package yet with testing alone, but for Honda, it is very important to keep pushing ourselves during the season to improve our competitiveness and achieve points finishes."
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