Honda will likely introduce their final engine upgrade of the season at the Malaysian Grand Prix in ten days time.
McLaren’s engine partner is continuing development of its power unit but chose Sepang to avoid suffering engine penalties at Honda’s home race in Suzuka Japan.
Honda already used seven of their ten available engine tokens when they introduced a major upgrade to improve the internal combustion engine and turbo ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix.
Whilst the team may have three tokens left both Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso have already used their full allocation of power unit components, meaning both will have to serve grid penalties when the update comes.
The Malaysian Grand Prix is the logical venue to sustain the penalties with Honda’s home race the following week at Suzuka.
This will give the team an entire race weekend to ensure the upgrade is working to its full potential and limits the chances of further penalties being served by McLaren in front of Honda’s home crowd.
“We introduced a new engine in Spa and at that moment we had nine races so we need to introduce one more engine,” Honda Chief Yusuke Hasegawa told Autosport. “If you split the nine races it could be Malaysia or Japan or the USA.
“We do not want to get a penalty at Japan, so Malaysia makes sense but we are still discussing it with the team.
“I don’t think the fans will let me take a penalty in Japan. I will not be allowed to walk into the circuit!”
Hasegawa would not be drawn on precisely which part of the power unit the upgrade will focus on but he did suggest the internal combustion engine remains the team’s main focus.
“We may introduce it in a different area because once we change the combustion it will cost us so much setting time we do not want to put a lot of resource on it this year,” he said.
“Weight reduction, a tougher cylinder block or other areas that would give more power”.
