McLaren and Honda play down latest rift reports

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McLaren’s Racing Director Eric Boullier and Honda’s F1 chief Yasuke Hasegawa have hit out over speculation of a new rift.

Reports in Spanish publication AS said that the situation was now so serious, it was possible McLaren and Honda could part company.

The team suffered a miserable start to pre-season testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. An oil leak disrupted Fernando Alonso on Monday and necessitated an engine change.

On Tuesday, Stoffel Vandoorne suffered a similar fate on his first day and also needed a replacement new power unit. Vandoorne's original engine is being sent to Honda headquarters in Japan for analysis.

The unexpected setback appears to have put strain on McLaren-Honda relations. This was addressed by Boullier and Hasegawa at a press conference on Wednesday.

"We are supposed to ditch Honda?" Boullier responded when asked whether a split was on the cards. “No. There is no plan at all.

"Our relationship with Honda is very good. We are happy with the marriage but we have to make it work.

"We had many issues," Boullier continued. "I think no one is obviously fundamental. All of them are fixable.

"I am not sure we know all of them yet, even Hasegawa-san, because yesterday’s engine is on the way to Japan."

Things were finally looking up on Wednesday, with Fernando Alonso finally able to get some trouble-free running.

"Today finally we can run, so have some other glitches, the usual ones you get on day one. But we have them on day three."

"Obviously we are not happy to have this trouble and we are sorry for both drivers," added Hasegawa, who also dismissed any suggestions that the McLaren Honda partnership was in last chance saloon.

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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.