In the aftermath of another dreadful race weekend, McLaren's Chief Operating Officer and acting CEO Jonathan Neale sought no false excuses to justify the team's double retirement in Canada, with both Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button forced to return to the garage with unrelated engine exhaust issues.
"After a race like that it's hard to put a cheerful smile on, " Neale told Sky Sports. "I think the last time we looked at the regulations it was four engines for the season, not for a race weekend. So we've got a bit of work to do. We have to face it and get on with it."
Evidently, the Honda power unit has failed to impress since it was bolted to the back of the MP4-30 chassis, with reliability issues only compounding its overall performance deficit. In Canada, weak straight-line speed coupled with excessive fuel consumption served to underline once again the huge amount of progress facing the Japanese manufacturer. While well aware of the team's enduring spectacular performance shortfall, Jonathan Neale refused to shoot the messenger.
"When you look back at the introduction of the V8s, when we were running there, we were blowing up engines left, right and center. So It's not a great place to be but unfortunately it is part of the right of passage on this. At the senior level the guys are pushing really hard. It's a fact that we have closed the gap from the start of the season to this point. But we're not going to sit here and say that anybody is happy with the current level of performance. The reality is that we just have to work through this, it's not going to get better by itself. We're here, we're committed to our engine partner, and we're going to win or lose as a team."
Neale also insisted that although Honda only has seven development tokens remaining in its allocation, the limit would not be an issue.
"We have reliability issues that can be fixed without the tokens, so they're not the issue at all. We just need time. Our primary goal for this season is to keep moving forward at the pace that we've done. We've closed a gap of about 2.5 seconds, we've got 2 seconds to go which is a huge way. We knew it was going to be a difficult weekend with a circuit like Montreal, but watch us over the next few races as I think there's a lot to come."
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