Honda F1 Upgrade In Doubt For Canadian Grand Prix

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Honda F1 boss Yusuke Hasegawa admits it will be “very tight” for the engine manufacturer to introduce its upgrade for next weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix.

Unreliability, lack of outright power and inefficiency is at the root of Honda’s lack of effectiveness compared to any of the other teams on the F1 grid.  With this in mind, the Japanese manufacturer planned for a major upgrade for the Montreal Grand Prix.  The focus was only to reduce the deficit to rival engine manufacturers, Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault.

Already the Honda boss Hasegawa is making excuses that indicate the upgrade will not be ready for the Canadian weekend. “I don’t give up and we are trying very hard but until Thursday, I can’t decide”.  This sentiment is disappointing.  The Honda boss went on to ‘plant a very late seed’ that they are struggling with an upgrade delivery:

“Already, we have had some performance, but if it is very small, it’s not worth changing engine for the next one.

“We haven’t started working on the settings. If we are not confident enough to set up that specification, it will cause some driveability issues, so the settings are also important”.

“We have some other elements in development, we can introduce it if we can set up and if we can check the reliability. Everything is not ready”. “Maybe we stick with the next step of the engine, even if the next step up is very small, or can we try another step up in performance? It’s very tight to introduce a big update for Canada”.

With the focus of upgrade being with the internal combustion side of the power unit, it really does lay the blame on Honda’s doorstep for the poor performance this season, as the ‘ICE’ is what specialise in.

McLaren, being the only F1 team not to score a single point this season, is under massive pressure to deliver.  McLaren’s Eric Boulier has been quoted as saying: “We need that step from our partner for the second half of the season to deliver strong performance and score points”.  Aside from the underperformance of the power unit, Honda’s lack of progress in development has been disappointing. It will be difficult to imagine the ‘partnership’ continuing into the 2018 season without a dramatic turnaround.

Rant over, for now…..

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