How competitive will the Honda engine be?

Given the struggles both Ferrari and Renault have endured at the outset of the sport’s new turbo era, Honda are surprisingly bullish about their prospects next season. And that’s putting it mildly. Despite their self-imposed exile from F1 since 2008, Honda are adamant they’ll return as winners in 2015.

“I trust - I am a firm believer - that we will win races next year,” predicted Honda’s Head of Motorsport Yasuhisa Arai in a recent interview. “I have confidence that we will match Mercedes."

The word ‘transitional’ evidently has no place in the Honda dictionary.

While Arari’s confidence is likely to be met with scepticism elsewhere – just imagine the reaction at Renault and Ferrari for starters - it has to be assumed his confidence is based on solid facts rather than fanciful thinking. Honda have had a full season in which to evaluate the competition and, thanks to Mercedes’ supply of engines to McLaren, they have been ideally situated to understand the strengths – and any weaknesses – of the current field-leading package and the advantages of a ‘works team’ partnership.

Their optimism is worth listening to.

Can McLaren live up to their end of the bargain?

Or, to put it in slightly cruder terms, if McLaren can only struggle to fifth in the Constructors’ Championship when already armed with the best engine in the field, why should a competitive engine from Honda make any difference in 2015?

Such scepticism is inevitable and understandable. But there are two significant mitigations to these doubts – understandable and inevitable - to consider. The first is that while the MP4-29 has been aerodynamically weak, those flaws – effectively amounting to a misguided hunch about the importance of rear-end grip this year - are relatively easy to remedy.

The second is that, in F1’s complicated new age of kinetic energy recovery systems, there is far more to an engine partnership than the provision of horsepower. "It’s access to the source code that allows you to both harness and harvest the energy recovery systems and that’s crucial for getting a well-balanced car," Ron Dennis explained to Sky F1 at Suzuka. The McLaren boss isn’t in the habit of delivering soundbites but his next line was the ultimate advertising slogan for his team’s reunion with Honda: “No grand prix team is going to win a World Championship in the future unless it is the dominant recipient of an engine manufacturer’s efforts."

Ron Dennis sees no impediment why Fernando Alonso can’t re-join McLaren Ron Dennis sees no impediment why Fernando Alonso can’t re-join McLaren

In layman’s term, it’s only by precisely understanding how an engine works that its potential can be fully realised and harnessed. The clue is in the names: for Mercedes-Mercedes, car and engine has dovetailed seamlessly in 2014; for McLaren-Mercedes, it’s been a compromise from start to finish.

Will the team be called McLaren-Honda or Honda-McLaren?

It was curious to note that, when pressed to reveal the timeline of Honda’s return to F1, Arai referred to the 2015 car as being composed of “the Honda engine and the McLaren chassis - the Honda McLaren.” No other team name puts the horse before the cart when it comes to naming rights – as above, McLaren are currently listed as ‘McLaren Mercedes’ and the new arrangment has been filed under a team name of 'McLaren Honda' on the 2015 entry list published by the FIA.

Nevertheless, despite that conclusive answer from F1's governing body, the primacy given to ‘Honda’ by Arai may have been a tell-tale clue to an even deeper business arrangement between the two parties than previously realised. We’ll see.

How much influence will Honda hold at McLaren?

With or without title sponsorship supplementing engine supply, Honda are sure to hold considerable sway at McLaren, not least because Dennis’ ‘dominant recipient’ line can be easily interpreted as open acknowledgement that an F1 team now needs an engine supplier far more than an engine supplier needs an F1 team.

For McLaren, in the words of their team boss Eric Boullier, the partnership is "a game changer". For F1, the question is whether Honda's return also means the game itself is changing too. The first out-of-house engine providers of 'a works team' in the new era, Honda's return may also break the mould that has traditionally seen the team as the dominant partner in a relationship between recipient and supplier. At Woking in 2015, the power may be with the power providers.

The first look at Honda's 2015 power unit

Did Alonso negotiate with Honda rather than McLaren?

This rather fanciful rumour - conjuring images of an aloof Alonso only speaking to his race engineer via a Honda intermediary - has been put to bed. "McLaren is the contracting party with the drivers, nobody else,” Boullier emphatically told Sky F1 last week.

But what part did Honda play in the pursuit of Fernando Alonso?

It's a question begging to be asked: would McLaren have re-signed but for Honda's reputed demand that a marque driver be the figurehead for their return to the sport?

2007 provides a few compelling reasons to answer in the negative. A sorry season for all concerned, Alonso's previous one-year stint with the team ended in spectacular implosion, a $100m fine and a divorce that appeared to be absolutely final. "We're not on speaking terms, we've not spoken," Ron Dennis revealed at the Spygate hearing which laid bare the scale of the rift that had torn the team asunder. "The relationship between Fernando and I is extremely cold - that is an understatement."

Speaking to Ted Karvitz and Martin Brundle, Eric Boullier has said McLaren are leading the negotiations to sign Fernando Alonso for next season's McLaren-H Speaking to Ted Karvitz and Martin Brundle, Eric Boullier has said McLaren are leading the negotiations to sign Fernando Alonso for next season's McLaren-H

Two years later, Dennis admitted that, were he to meet Alonso again, he wouldn't "be able to eliminate in my mind the negativity that he caused to everyone - of course not".

By coincidence or not, the first suggestions - treated with extreme caution and general incredulity at the time - that Alonso could return only first emerged in the months after Honda's return was announced. Nor is there much doubt that Honda have done their bit by agreeing to provide the funds - or at least a substantial chunk - of a deal reputed to be the largest in F1 history.

Nevertheless, it's impossible to believe that McLaren themselves have not been proactive in the pursuit of Alonso. The Spaniard is, lest we easily forget, still arguably the best driver in the sport. If the design is right, and the engine up to scratch, the final box will be ticked green if and when the Spaniard signs up.

When will we first see and hear the McLaren-Honda?

Although the interim MP4-29H - with the 'H' referring to the presence of a Honda engine in the car - has already debuted at a filming day at Silverstone, we may not see the new partnership in action for several more months, if not weeks. A literal sound bite of the new engine's debut, held behind closed doors at the Northamptonshire circuit, is only likely to be released after McLaren's partnership with Mercedes concludes in the Abu Double season finale, while any decision on whether the McLaren-Honda will run at the subsequent Abu Dhabi test is dependent on the success - or otherwise - of its Silverstone shakedown.

PG