Honda isn’t sure it will be able to bring an updated engine to Canada.
With the current engine, McLaren would suffer at the high power Canadian circuit next month. Honda wants to bring an update to close the gap to it’s rivals, but doesn’t think it will be able to successfully transfer what they’ve done in the labs to something that can be put in a car.
“Obviously Canada will be a power circuit, so if we can prepare the new engine, we’d like to,” Honda Formula 1 boss, Yusuke Hasegawa, told Autosport. “But I’m not sure that we can.”
Although the Honda power unit has been significantly down on power all season, the manufacturer has only made minor reliability tweaks and changed the engine maps until this weekend.
In Barcelona, Honda has introduced a new induction and fuel system which, it says, almost eliminated drivability problems.
“The upgrade is a quite decent level of upgrade, but [with] the current gap to the top teams, we cannot be proud too much.”
Hasegawa also said it wasn’t a problem with the engine that brought Fernando Alonso to a stop after only a handful of laps.
“From the data we lost the oil first, so the pressure went down and still the engine was running, so the engine was ok,” he said. “But once the oil pressure was down then the engine was broken.”
The team believes a mechanical issue with the oil feed caused the pressure drop. Hasegawa is confident the problem won’t occur in the race.
