Alonso slams Honda for its poor reliability

Fernando Alonso has publicly blamed Honda for McLaren’s miserable pre-season, stating its 2017 engine has no power and no reliability.

McLaren has completed fewer laps than any other team after six days of testing, and Alonso didn’t hold back from pointing the finger at the team’s engine supplier.

“We have only one problem: that is the power unit,” Alonso said. “There is no reliability and there is no power. We are 30km/h down on the straight, every straight.

“So when you are 30km/h down on every straight it is difficult to have a feeling on the car. Everything feels good, but when you arrive to normal speed you don’t know what is going to happen.”

Alonso expressed his frustration and expressed his concern that the team has missed a huge opportunity to close the gap to their rivals.

“Probably this year is a bit more frustrating (than 2015) because of the change of regulations and things like that, you have higher hopes when you think you can close that gap over the winter.”

McLaren’s whole testing programme has been littered with reliability issues and multiple power units have been needed. On the very first day, McLaren was hit with an issue, which Alonso believes should have never occurred.

“The oil tank was quite an amateur problem we had that day,” he said. “From day one we keep unlocking a little bit the situation in terms of power and in terms of reliability.

“When you do more laps you discover other things. Temperature in the rear calliper or whatever, bodywork that is not properly tight.

“Things you normally discover on day or day two in winter testing. We do 40 laps every day, so we are like in day two of testing for everyone else.”

Despite expressing major concern, the Spaniard is confident, the issues will eventually be resolved.

“There is nothing to worry for Australia I guess,” he added. “We’ll be fully ready to compete at a good level, the only question mark is how much power we will have.

“I don’t think we are too far back in terms of chassis side. Definitely, we need to improve and we must improve. The situation is far from ideal.

“We are a big team. McLaren has been dominating the sport for many years and fighting for the championship for many years.

“When you think about McLaren when you see a McLaren, you are afraid of them when you are an opponent because you know McLaren will sort things quickly as a big team. So this is what we need.”