As part of a daily series in the run-up to the start of pre-season, Motorsport Week brings you brief left-field reflections and stories of teams, drivers and reserve/test drivers that will be part of the Formula 1 paddock in 2019.
Honda will this year supply Red Bull and Toro Rosso – the first time since its Formula 1 comeback that it has acted as partner to multiple teams.
It will be the fifth season since it returned to Formula 1 as an engine supplier, which came off the back of a six-year absence, following the plug being pulled on its programme at the height of the financial crisis in 2008.
Honda’s return with McLaren for 2015 was beset by chronic underperformance and unreliability – and perhaps the end-of-2014 Abu Dhabi test acted as an omen.
Formula 1 stayed on after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix for two days of running and Honda used the opportunity to get an early run with McLaren, in the modified and tongue-twistingly-titled MP4-29H/1X1. Gone was the Mercedes branding, in came new Honda stickers on the car.
But it was not an action-filled two days. Unless you were a mechanic.
Test driver Stoffel Vandoorne completed just three laps on the Tuesday, owing to an electrical issue and fuel exchange problems, while on Wednesday further mechanical setbacks halted him on his second lap. It meant Vandoorne amassed just five laps – in reality, not even that much – across two days of running.
Considering the problems that Renault, and to a lesser extent Ferrari, suffered as they debuted their hybrid power units in early 2014 Honda’s problems, viewed in context, were not seen as disastrous. Indeed, the early running allowed the new partnership some unexpected running (however brief), data gathering and the opportunity to assess the lay of the land.
But in hindsight it was merely the start of a relationship that was riddled with problems and eventually, and to no-one’s surprise, resulted in a premature divorce.
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