The chief of Japanese manufacturer, Yusuke Hasegawa who won’t be leading Formula 1 related projects by next year, said in a statement that the team who worked on engine this year for Formula 1 season can be “proud” of their development rate.
He announced that he will be leaving Formula 1 project and will be working on road car project from next year.
Hasegawa said in a statement to Motorsport.com, “Our performance improvement level is something to be proud of.”
Honda Formula 1 team opted for a change for 2017 season. The team changed the concept of engine, which could not perform up to mark due to unavailability of the time during the season.
The decision was made to save the relationship with McLaren Formula 1 team, which ran into a series of engine failure. The changes were made to enhance engine capabilities and performance but at the cost of reliability.
“Our competition level was lower than expected so we needed to update more often. We needed to sacrifice time checking reliability to get the updates to the track. It was strategic.
“We are confident we can confirm the reliability. This is just a time issue. We prioritised the performance update over checking reliability.”
Hasegawa confessed that Honda needs to prioritise the area of reliability, whose issues were “not acceptable” during this year season.
Honda was unable to replicate the results that it had achieved during testing on dynos, in the first half of 2017 season.
“It’s very bad that we have had failures on the track and on the dyno,” he said.
“Reliability, we had a clear target, which is we have to be able to complete five races with one engine but we haven’t achieved that. It’s a clear point. We are very disappointed.”
Renault engines will be replacing the Honda position with McLaren for the next year season.
McLaren executive director Zak Brown said, “Three years is a long time in Formula 1 so we needed to change directions to get our team back on top. The decision we made is one we believe is the right one for McLaren.
“We are grateful to Honda. They’re a great company, with great people, and the relationship was always strong. The relationship still is strong. Wouldn’t rule out racing with them again, wish them the best but we needed to make some tough decisions to do what’s in our best interest.”
