Honda believes its power unit concept, which was designed from the ground-up for the 2017 season, has the potential to match the leading power unit supplied by Mercedes, and therefore the manufacturer will stick with it and continue to develop it through 2018.
Honda currently supply only McLaren and has struggled to get on top of the new engine rules, with seasons one and two proving disastrous for the team. Meanwhile their third season together hasn't gone much better, in fact they have less points than they did at the same point in 2016.
But Honda chose to introduce an entirely new design concept this year, which Honda F1's head Yusuke Hasegawa compared to starting from scratch and considers this year to be 'Year One' of the project, therefore performance gains will take time, but he is confident they're on the right path.
"We introduced a new power unit concept this year, so I would almost call this Year One again,” said Hasegawa. "But our aim is to develop the 2017 concept into the 2018 season and hopefully 2019 as well.
"So the engine weight, centre of gravity and the combustion concept is all going in the same direction as the other three engine manufacturers.
"It was good for us to do that. We can modify the specification of some of these parts to catch up with the other three engine manufacturers. Last year the engine concept was completely different, so with minor modifications we could not duplicate the same type of performance. That’s why we really needed to change the whole engine concept this year."
Hasegawa says he's confident they're beginning to close the gap to the leaders following the introduction of their 'Spec 3' upgrade, meanwhile work continues on 'Spec 4' – with everything carried over to next year, unlike last year when development had to stop because it wasn't relevant for the new engine concept.
"I am definitely confident that we are closing the gap to the leaders so, from that point of view, our speed of development is good. But at the same time it is natural for the follower because you have a target that you know is achievable."
He added: "We don't stop developing, we need to keep updating. Of course the performance and results are the most important things but it’s all learning for the future too. Compared to last year we needed to modify the engine concept, but next year we will keep the same concept.
"It’s good that we can use the same concept because this year’s development and improvement is directly connected to next year. So that means we don’t need to stop the current development, and from that point of view we have already started next year’s design."
