McLaren CEO Ron Dennis says the team are battling through the pain in their search for a competitive car alongside engine supplier Honda McLaren CEO Ron Dennis says the team are battling through the pain in their search for a competitive car alongside engine supplier Honda

Ron Dennis has insisted that McLaren’s partnership with Honda will take them back to world title success and labelled former team boss Eddie Jordan a "village idiot" for suggesting that he should step down.

Dennis was speaking to Sky Sports F1 ahead of the British GP - another tough race for McLaren Honda as it turned out with Jenson Button crashing out on lap one, although Fernando Alonso at least scored his first point of the season after finishing 10th at Silverstone.

But while Dennis refused to criticise Honda in the interview with Martin Brundle, he changed tack when he was reminded that Jordan had branded McLaren’s management as “arrogant” and that they should go.

“I consider Formula 1 a family, and families live in villages. And villages always have a village idiot. He fits the bill perfectly,” Dennis said.

McLaren Honda are a year behind their rivals in terms of development, which is also stymied by rules that govern testing, with their car struggling for both performance and reliability.

Yet Dennis reckoned that the MP4-30 chassis is coming along well. “It’s certainly a challenge,” he said. "Data is something we focus on all the time and our car performance is actually extremely good here. It’s hard to believe but we’re getting better aero figures than any other time during the year.

“The progress is on chassis performance. We have a real challenge with our partners Honda. They are wrestling with reliability as well as performance; and when reliability becomes an issue, I’m afraid performance suffers.

“So sometimes we’ve gone forward but sometimes back. But the first thing we have to do is get reliability.”

Jenson Button

Poor reliability has meant that both Button and Alonso have already exceeded their allocation of engines for the season, although McLaren Honda will now be allowed one extra per driver in the interests of fairness.

“Honda has a huge resource and it’s applying it. We are obviously in deep discussion with them on a regular basis and of course it’s not pleasant for them,” Dennis said.

“Is it painful? Of course, but we have to use pain as a motivating force. It’s a challenge but it’s the right challenge because without the support of a company such as Honda, I don’t think it’s possible to win the World Championship.

“Therefore we have to go through this pain to get to where we want to.”