Boullier: From day one Honda were unprepared for F1

Boullier was hired by Ron Dennis after the impressive work he did with Genii-owned Lotus, under his watch the underfinanced team batted well above their remit.

He arrived at Woking in 2014 with Dennis firmly in charge, departing in July last year with Brown in charge with the organisation very different to the one he joined four years earlier.

In an interview with Japanese magazine Sokuho, Boullier revealed that the rot at McLaren started long before Brown and his cabal took over the helm, "From day one, at the first meeting with their engineers I realised how much Honda was unprepared for the challenge of F1."

"Of course, I told Ron immediately that we would need at least three to four years of development to get back to the top, but the contracts had already been signed and Ron was sure he could relive the successes the team had in the past with Honda."

“But the current power units are extremely sophisticated and only Mercedes was ready because they had years to develop the package."

"And for that reason, I would say from a technical-historical point of view, the union between McLaren and Honda could not have happened at a more complicated and challenging time for the organisation."

The decision to ditch Honda - no matter the circumstances - must be paining the shareholders at McLaren as they watch the Japanese manufacturer and Red Bull partner up so effectively that they scored a podium in their first race, with Max Verstappen's third place at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. Honda's first podium since 2008.

Rewinding to last year, with no apparent end in sight to McLaren's plight with the Japanese auto giant, one of Brown's first major decisions, as chief of the second most successful team in F1 history, was to end the works Honda deal and fork out money for a supply of Renault customer engines.

These were days of great misguided expectations as, to the McLaren big-brass, Red Bull showed that with the Renault power races could be won. Obviously, Brown believed his team could do the same.

But things went from bad to worse, and only the immense efforts of veteran Fernando Alonso gave their season a little respectability. The expected podiums and occasional wins with Renault simply did not happen.

Boullier was around at the time, and recalled, "In April we realized that we had completely lost the plot with the [MCL33]. We found serious problems in data correlation and by the time we found the solutions it was too late."

"In some respects, we were less competitive than we were in 2017, which was a difficult situation to deal with internally, particularly managing the morale within the team," added Boullier who has landed a role with the French Grand Prix organisers.