Honda has been hard at work during the three week break between the Bahrain and Spanish races and it’s hoping that work will pay off with a further step forward for McLaren this weekend.
The Woking team, whilst still without a point this year, managed its best qualifying and race performance in Bahrain with Fernando Alonso starting 14th and finishing 11th, just one place outside the points paying top ten.
It wasn’t a completely positive weekend though as team-mate Jenson Button was unable to take part in either session due to electrical problems.
Honda motorsport chief Yasuhisa Arai is hopeful that improvements in both driveability and reliability will help the team to not only score points, but to ensure both drivers make the end of the race in Spain.
“The short break before the Spanish GP has been good for Honda, to calmly reflect on what has happened in the first four races, to analyse what we have done well or not so well, and to make preparations ahead of the European races,” he explained.
“We hope that Spain will see another incremental step forward for Honda, in which we’ve prepared updates on the power unit to help with driveability and reliability,” he added.
“And like us, McLaren has had a productive two weeks and will be bringing more updates to test at the track and we’ll see how the car will run together as one.
“We’re confident that every step we take together as a team is in the right direction, and hopefully this weekend will once again prove our continuing progress.”
Meanwhile racing director Eric Boullier is confident in their developments ahead of the race.
“During the three-week break between Bahrain and Spain, we’ve been working very productively on every front to bring improvements to the car,” he said.
“We know that one fix or upgrade won’t provide a significant upturn in performance, so we’re united in our continued efforts to bring further gains to both chassis and power unit, in terms of both reliability and outright performance, step by step.”
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