A lot of things are happening these days at the McLaren Formula 1 team’s Woking headquarters.
Fernando Alonso is going to abandon the Scuderia Ferrari for the British outfit next year, Kevin Magnussen’s seat is uncertain for the 2015 season, while Honda and Ron Dennis struck a deal for turbocharged V6 hybrid power units, effective now.
About the newly-rejuvenated McLaren-Honda partnership, both automotive giants started to test the 2015 interim car less than two weeks ago. Dubbed the MP4-29H/1X1, the single seater didn’t break a sweat on its first public outing at Silverstone. But the vehicle wasn’t pushed too hard then because the track was specially rented by McLaren for the filming of the promotional video below.
As it’s often the case with interim Formula 1 cars, the McLaren-Honda MP4-29H/1X1 was riddled with faults during its second outing on Tuesday, at the Yas Marina circuit in the United Arab Emirates.
McLaren-Honda reserve driver Stoffel Vandoorne had to put up with a very unreliable development car, especially if you consider that in 8 hours on the track, he managed to do a very disappointing 3 laps.
Furthermore, he didn’t give it the beans to find out how the newly-developed Honda 1.6-liter hybrid power unit from Honda performs. "We'd hoped to get a few more laps under our belts today. But the team are already analyzing the situation and we'll hopefully cure it ahead of tomorrow.”
Vandoorne added that “the purpose of this test is to enable the engineers to deepen their knowledge of the McLaren and Honda collaboration. This is their first time working together at the track.”
Racing director Eric Boullier is adamant that electrical gremlins are at fault for the subpar results, “but it's satisfying to see that we got the engine fired up, the car out of the garage, and some laps on the board.”
Yasuhisa Arai, the biggest fish at Honda's Motorsports division, clarified things by claiming “the engine we used today is still under development – it's not for the actual race – and we're on schedule to develop it further ahead of the forthcoming season.”
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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