Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHonda

Honda not letting point mask 'huge gap'

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Honda motorsport boss Yasuhisa Arai says the point scored by Fernando Alonso will not mask the "huge gap to the front" McLaren still faces.

Alonso finished tenth in the British Grand Prix, the second time a McLaren has scored points this season after Jenson Button's eighth place in Monaco. While Arai is happy with the result, he told F1i the deficit to the front - with both McLarens dropping out in Q1 - remains his biggest concern at this stage.

"Honestly we are very happy but there is still a huge gap to the front," Arai said. "So we need to make more of a step up for the second half of the season."

And Arai takes confidence from the reliability McLaren enjoyed on a circuit which was very testing for the Honda power unit.

"The race weekend was a very good weekend [in terms of reliability], but we still had small, minor problems; small things that popped up, but that is racing. We are almost finished thinking about reliability, and we move on next to start thinking about performance."

Alonso's result on Sunday means McLaren has scored points on each of the last two occasions it has completed a race, following double retirements in Canada and Austria.

Click here for F1i's driver ratings from the British Grand Prix

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.