<< Return to the news list

McLaren two weeks behind schedule after late engine deal switch

Published on 19 Sep 2017 14:49
6
By: Fergal Walsh

McLaren's plans for 2018 have not been compromised after only recently announcing its new engine partner. However, racing director Eric Boullier admits that it is two weeks behind schedule. Last Friday, the Woking team confirmed that it would be ditching Honda at the end of the season.

After re-forming the iconic partnership in 205, McLaren-Honda has enjoyed no success together, with not even a podium to its name in the V6 era. Next season, McLaren will run with Renault power while Honda will supply Red Bull's junior team, Toro Rosso.

Boullier admitted that it will be a challenge to get plans back up to full speed: "Obviously it's a challenge," he said. "Now we have to be working 24/7 I would say to try recover a couple of weeks where an ideal decision could've been taken. But, two weeks is recoverable.

"It won't be any compromise next year. Of course, we don't have the same experience as some of the costumers, so we have to discover the package. But, I think we can trust our engineers to do a very good job and two weeks are recoverable, but this is going to be a huge load of work and I'm glad to see there's a lot of energy going inside McLaren to try and recover as fast as possible."

Boullier also denied that being behind schedule means that development on this year's car would halt: "No. It doesn't mean that at all," he said. "It just means we are increasing the workload to make sure we can recover, and once we recover we will go back to the standard way to work and we have a different process today about work, because next year's car, despite the change of power unit, it's an evolution so there will be no revolutions. That doesn't change the way we work."

Fergal Walsh

calle.itw

Posts: 8,527

Should I provide you with a spoiler?

1
Sep 19 2017 - 16:43

F1 News McLaren Renault Honda

Replies (6)

talktohenry

Posts: 362
Can't wait to see if they quicker than RB next year!
- + 0
- Sep 19 2017 - 15:06
- calle.itw
  
  Posts: 8,527
  Should I provide you with a spoiler?
  + 1
  
  Sep 19 2017 - 16:43
- xoya
  
  Posts: 583
  I predict they will be on par with this year's performance with a bit of less DNFs. All-in-all, they will be the 4th best team on the grid, fighting with Force racing.
  + 0
  
  Sep 19 2017 - 17:09
- kngrthr
  
  Posts: 203
  its a complete redesign of the back end and then they need to get their head around the cooling vs drag compromise with a new engine.
  give them a month at the start of the season to sort all that to catch up to RB.
  
  should i be cheeky and say that for three years their aero hasn't seen full speed yet
  + 0
  
  Sep 20 2017 - 03:58
- Barron
  
  Posts: 625
  Not cheeky at all: truth. McLaren will not have been able to extract maximum performance from their aero if the car doesn't travel at designed speed. As regards the 're-designed rear end', I think that's partly true, but since the 2017 spec Honda was completely redesigned to follow more Mercedes & Ferrari form factor, there wouldn't seem to be a lot of difference in the 4 makes. This is pure speculation of course. By the way, do you think Boullier has swallowed the Ronspeak Dictionary?
  + 0
  
  Sep 20 2017 - 11:23
mcbhargav

Posts: 1,332
Force India might be slightly freaking out due to Renault deal.
- + 0
- Sep 20 2017 - 00:57