The Woking-based outfit's struggles with Honda have continued at the British Grand Prix, with Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso only able to qualify 17th and 18th.

Boullier has said that things need to change quickly if McLaren is not going to lose its status as one of F1's leading teams.

"The damage is easy to understand," he explained. "You establish your brand by your success and repeated success and I think McLaren, by the number of wins and championships, has clearly established its brand as excellence.

"Commercially it does hurt because obviously a lot of people and a lot of companies are interested in joining us.

"But some people in their organisation may question the lack of results actually.

"And I don't think we can wait for very long any more."

Honda pressure

Although Honda is convinced that it will eventually make the progress it needs, Boullier knows that pressure is mounting to fast-track those steps.

"I keep telling [Honda chief] Arai-san every day. We need to be successful as soon as possible," he explained.

"We are not going to tell you what we are telling each other behind the scenes, and we have to face the world together as one team. But the pain is real.

"There is nothing you can hide. You [the media] are asking the right questions, everything you ask has been raised 100 times.

"We put pressure on Honda, they put pressure on us: more us than them so far because we need to have more performance.

"From the package of the car and engine today, more than 50 per cent and much more will come from the power unit. They know this; we know this, so this is where we put pressure if we want to catch up.

"It is true there is a timing issue because Honda is in F1 but its main business is selling cars. But we are in F1 to win races, so we have to make sure the timing of both projects are aligned.

"This has been discussed many times already."