Honda now turning focus to improving 'power'

Honda is ready to push ahead with finding more performance from its 2016 power unit. After the unmitigated disaster of 2015, when McLaren and Honda reunited but finished an embarrassing ninth overall, this season has started better for the Anglo-Japanese collaboration.

But the once-great team is still not yet a contender, causing former McLaren driver Kevin Magnussen to poke fun at the Woking outfit at the weekend. On Instagram, the now Renault driver published a 'meme' depicting Michael Schumacher's three-wheeled Ferrari of 1998, after a famous collision with David Coulthard at Spa. The text reads: "Still faster than a McLaren". Magnussen later deleted the post after criticism from his followers.

Honda has taken most of the blame for McLaren's struggles, but the Japanese marque is now pressing ahead with ramping up the performance of its turbo V6. "We focused first on the reliability and I think despite the problems in Bahrain we've made some improvements," Yasuhisa Arai, Honda's latest F1 chief, is quoted by Italy's Autosprint. "Now we will focus on engine performance and power, knowing that our current level is not good enough to take position in Q3," he admitted. (GMM)