Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHonda

Honda unlikely to change power unit layout in 2016

Honda is likely to stick with its current power unit layout for its 2016 design despite the difficulties it has faced this season.

The McLaren MP4-30 was launched at the start of 2015 to great fanfare over its “size-zero” design. The tight packaging is the result of the close collaboration between McLaren and Honda regarding the power unit layout, but the car has proven to be off the pace at the majority of circuits and the power unit unreliable.

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Speaking exclusively to F1i, Honda motorsport boss Yasuhisa Arai says the belief is the failings of this year’s power unit can be rectified without a complete overhaul of the layout.

“Looking at this year and next year, we’ve already gone in to a plan on how to make it better based on the current layout,” Arai said, speaking via a translator. “The final plan may come in winter but we are already on it.

“It will be the base we work from because it’s the layout we’ve worked on from scratch with McLaren. We think there’s the possibility there, that’s why we fixed on that layout. So there is more potential to be had.”

And Arai says Honda will still use its remaining development tokens on its power unit before the season is complete.

“There is no concrete plan of when we will be using them, but we still plan to use them.”

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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.