Mclaren Honda 2015

[GoranF1]

I am afraid that a good ICE progress in Austin will be masked by Renault's 11 tokens!
Anyway hoping for a positive weekend and some useful testing for 2016.

[mclaren111]

It's ALL about 2016 now

Seems they are for once keeping a promise and is using remainder of the year for testing =D>

[Thunder]

The Singapore Gearboxes can be reused. =D>

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mclar ... -the-dead/

[kaepernickus]

http://www.mclaren.com/formula1/partner ... ren-honda/

Hilton sponsorship extended by one year (now until 2019).

[GoranF1]

If you "read between the lines" it's quite clear Mclaren expects a lot from this PU upgrade.

http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/139 ... tes-austin

[trinidefender]

If you "read between the lines" it's quite clear Mclaren expects a lot from this PU upgrade.

http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/139 ... tes-austin

Jenson runs a few laps and posts a lap. Alonso comes out and almost immediately beats that by 0.133 seconds.

[mikeerfol]

I wonder how Ron feels about all the Red Bull-Honda rumors...

[NL_Fer]

I think it would be clever of Honda to supply two topteams, so they can battle it out in 2018, both with a Honda PU in the back. I don't think Ron would mind, if they both would get the same engine and Honda doesn't favour Redbull over McLaren.

[GoranF1]

If you "read between the lines" it's quite clear Mclaren expects a lot from this PU upgrade.

http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/139 ... tes-austin

He was only 4 tents down in S1 but 3+ sec at the end of lap...S1 is power no?

Jenson runs a few laps and posts a lap. Alonso comes out and almost immediately beats that by 0.133 seconds.

[GoranF1]

[OneAlex]

I think it would be clever of Honda to supply two topteams, so they can battle it out in 2018, both with a Honda PU in the back. I don't think Ron would mind, if they both would get the same engine and Honda doesn't favour Redbull over McLaren.

Supplying a bottom or midfield team would be clever in my mind, but not a top team, and especially not Red Bull.

As far as I understand it the whole idea of the McLaren-Honda partnership is to work as closely as possible together, if you then have another top team coming in demanding parity as Red Bull you're faced with the problem of somehow accommodating Red Bull by Honda easing off the close partnership with McLaren, or else giving them whatever development secrets McLaren and Honda have been jointly working on.

On top of that there's the problem Red Bull could again have a faster chassis than McLaren (even in-spite of McLaren's being designed from day one for the Honda PU), and are highly demanding, so would want Honda to focus more and more on them, particularly if they had a better shot at winning the championship.

If McLaren and Honda are so confident that whatever unique design they have will work, I just can't see why McLaren would want to risk giving that advantage to another (currently better) team, or Honda would want to risk any part of the design ethos later leaking to VW or whomever RB eventually go with.

[NL_Fer]

I don't think the close relationship is that special, it is just about finding the balance between pu package, cooling space and pu performance.

And Honda has less problems with supplying more teams. It was Ron Dennis, who didn't want to buy the engine of a competitor, like Mercedes or Ferrari.

[bauc]

I think it would be clever of Honda to supply two topteams, so they can battle it out in 2018, both with a Honda PU in the back. I don't think Ron would mind, if they both would get the same engine and Honda doesn't favour Redbull over McLaren.

Supplying a bottom or midfield team would be clever in my mind, but not a top team, and especially not Red Bull.

As far as I understand it the whole idea of the McLaren-Honda partnership is to work as closely as possible together, if you then have another top team coming in demanding parity as Red Bull you're faced with the problem of somehow accommodating Red Bull by Honda easing off the close partnership with McLaren, or else giving them whatever development secrets McLaren and Honda have been jointly working on.

On top of that there's the problem Red Bull could again have a faster chassis than McLaren (even in-spite of McLaren's being designed from day one for the Honda PU), and are highly demanding, so would want Honda to focus more and more on them, particularly if they had a better shot at winning the championship.

If McLaren and Honda are so confident that whatever unique design they have will work, I just can't see why McLaren would want to risk giving that advantage to another (currently better) team, or Honda would want to risk any part of the design ethos later leaking to VW or whomever RB eventually go with.

Their is another point to this ''problem'' as well, I'm sure people at Mclaren will feel betrayed in a certain way, since their car (good or bad) was and its still used as a test bead for the Honda PU, and now we face a situation where RedBull could possibly get the next year Honda PU (which hopefully will be much much better) served on the plate and ready to be used, and Mclaren can find them self's behind RedBull, despite the effort and resource spent developing the concept toughener.

[NL_Fer]

Not really, it was McLaren that wanted to race Honda in 2015. Honda wanted to wait till 2016 and never argumentee to be McLarens sole supplier.

[OneAlex]

If RB genuinely approached Honda and thought they'd have a good chance of beating McLaren, what would Honda's "cultural philosophy" be behind the decision? Would it be a case of loyalty to McLaren as the original party and giving them primary attention? Or would they be driven primarily to win and so start working harder with Red Bull in order to succeed?