Amid the engine crisis that has engulfed McLaren and Honda there have been suggestions that Mercedes may provide a helping hand, but the Woking team chief Zak Brown explains why it is unlikely that assistance will come from their rivals.
Brown told Sky, “We’re a big team that knows how to win races and championships so I think most of the teams, while it’s a shame to see where we are, they like us where we are. They don’t want to get us too close to them which is understandable.”
“We’ve spoken with Honda about a variety of different scenarios. We ultimately think that Honda can get the job done, they have in the past. We need to make sure the development comes at a faster pace.”
“We’re starting to work on our 2018 car now and you can only go so far before you need to know the architecture of what you’re doing so I think around the summer time, which obviously isn’t far away, we need to finalise what we’re doing with Honda moving forward.”
McLaren are enduring the worst spell in their illustrious history, exacerbating the urgency is the fact that their star driver Fernando Alonso is beyond frustrated, while the Honda power unit appears to have taken a step backward relative to last year.
Brown is well aware of this, “We can’t continue to be uncompetitive – that’s not what McLaren race for. It’s been three years, so we need to see some drastic power adjustments or some different ways to get there.
“We, like Fernando [Alonso], want to be winning races and being on the podium and in the current state we can’t do that – so some things need to change,” added Brown.
Big Question: What options do McLaren have to get more competitive?