nevill3 wrote:A Jensen Button interview this weekend suggested that Mclaren's initial plan to not use too many engines in their pursuit of reliability and power has been abandoned. He said that most teams would use more than four engines and so would incur penalties before the end of the season so he thought trying to conserve their engines was pointless (then he mentioned that they may now get five engines anyway).
This is contrary to earlier interviews with Ron that suggested they were not prepared to blow up engines and incur the penalties that comes with using extra PUs.
My initial inference was that they were trying to get the first flyaway races done on one engine so that they could use a modified engine (may be use some tokens early) when they get to Europe.
I didn't take it that way. They just asked him about his concerns about taking penalties and he answered. Besides, with Alonso anyways , it appears like they brought him in before there was any damage. With Jenson, it's less obvious.but I think damaged was limited to the failed part.