Yasuhisa Arai insists he's still the man to lead Honda's development
Wednesday 8 July 2015 11:47, UK
Eric Boullier says McLaren are putting pressure on Honda every day to improve the performance of their power unit.
The Woking squad endured a dismal qualifying ahead of their home race at Silverstone, only out-pacing the Manor drivers who are at the wheel of a modified 2014 Marussia, which was hardly a frontrunner last year.
Boullier says well over 50 per cent of McLaren’s deficit to Mercedes at the front is down to Honda and contrary to the Japanese firm’s insistence that their plan is for the long term, he wants improvement soon.
“I keep telling [Yasuhisa] Arai every day we need to be successful as soon as possible – twice a day and three times a night because of jet lag,” Boullier said.
“We don’t have five years of pain. Like any partnership in the world we are not going to tell you what we are saying to each other behind the scenes. We need to face the world together as one team, but the pain is real, there is nothing we can hide, you are asking the right questions and everything you ask has already been raised 100 times.
“We put pressure on Honda, they put pressure on us, maybe more is on them so far because we need to have more performance from the package of the car and engine and more than 50% and much more of that will come from the power unit.
"Everybody knows this: we know this, they know this; so this is where we put pressure on them to catch up.”
With the blame being placed so heavily on Honda, the position of their chief motorsport officer Yasuhisa Arai was questioned at Silverstone. But he gave a defiant “yes” when asked if he was still fit to lead the development team.
“I want to lead our programme by myself,” he said. “It is a long-term project for Honda so we need to step up every place, every year. It is a long-term project.”
A small benefit for McLaren and Honda could come in the form of an extra penalty-free engine with the concession for new manufacturers agreed at Wednesday’s meeting of F1's Strategy Group.
“There is an email circulating between the F1 Commission members, so the idea is to get a positive vote going to the World Council meeting next week so it should be applied from the next race in Hungary,” Boullier revealed.
Aside from the engine problems, there was an error of McLaren’s own making in Q1 when one of Jenson Button’s tyres was fitted to Fernando Alonso’s car, for which the team received a reprimand.
“We had a double pitstop with both cars, but there was a little bit of confusion when Fernando passed Jenson when Jenson stopped at the FIA scale and one of the tyres of Jenson was put on Fernando’s car,” Boullier said.
However, despite all the problems and mistakes, Alonso is still satisfied that progress is being made.
“It is true that the competitiveness that we have now is not what we wanted, not what we expect, we knew that this being the first year would be a difficult time, but obviously going out in Q1 is a bit more difficult than what we thought,” the Spaniard said
“But I am still optimistic and happy with the progress of the car. We need to fix some problems, but we are in the right direction. Unfortunately with the current rules everything takes a lot of time.”
