A failed marriage
During this intense Formula 1 pre-season, marked by shakedowns and testing between Barcelona and Bahrain, much has been said about the serious problems shown by Honda’s power unit. From this year, the Japanese manufacturer has ended its long-standing partnership with Red Bull to begin a new chapter alongside Aston Martin.
The struggles at the Japanese giant have brought many fans’ memories back 11 years, to one of the biggest and most embarrassing failures in Honda’s Formula 1 history. In 2015, Honda reunited with McLaren in an attempt to recreate the dominant success of the late 1980s – a project that ultimately collapsed in dramatic fashion.
After starting the hybrid power unit era in 2014 with Mercedes engines, the Woking-based team decided from the following season to place its trust in Honda, which was returning to Formula 1 after seven years away. However, then team principal Eric Boullier was far from convinced about putting McLaren’s future in the hands of the Japanese manufacturer, and he made his concerns clear to the team’s historic boss, Ron Dennis.
A disaster waiting to happen
“I remember that in 2014, after a visit to Honda’s Formula 1 base in Japan, I came back to Woking and asked Ron Dennis: ‘How is it possible that Honda will be ready to compete with Mercedes and the others next year, when they are clearly still so far behind?’” Boullier recalled in an interview with Motor Sport Magazine, reflecting on that nightmare season for McLaren.
“But Ron replied: ‘Don’t worry.’ Later, I went back to the Honda factory and called Ron from there. ‘Come here and see it with your own eyes,’ I told him. But once again, Ron assured me that everything would be fine. But it couldn’t be fine, and it wasn’t fine. Honda simply wasn’t ready.
They had started working on their Formula 1 project at the end of 2012. Ferrari and Renault had begun in 2010, and Mercedes as early as 2009. The Honda guys were very far behind.”
This harsh reality became painfully obvious during pre-season testing. Even Dennis himself was eventually forced to come to terms with the failure of the ambitious project.
“When we tested at Jerez in February 2015, we were terrible: slow and unreliable. Ron called me and said: ‘You were right and I was wrong, Eric. It’s probably the first time I’ve ever apologised to a Frenchman.’”
Fernando Alonso, who was a central figure in that project at the time – just as he is today in Formula 1 – might well feel his ears burning at the memory of that ill-fated McLaren-Honda partnership.
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