Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Honda focusing on fine-tuning for rest of 2015

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Honda's chief motorsports officer Yasuhisa Arai has said that the engine manufacturer is working on fine tuning its troubled power unit over the remaining four races of the season.

"Our goal is to gather more data throughout the remaining races, especially from our new ICE [internal combustion engine] introduced in Sochi two weeks ago," he said this week.

"The team has confirmed that the development direction is good, so we will now work on fine tuning it for the remaining four races.

"It will be interesting to see how this will work together with the updated aero package this weekend," he added, speaking ahead of the United States Grand Prix this weekend.

"We head to Circuit of The Americas with anticipation. It is a highly technical track that provides exciting racing, particularly the jostling for position around turn 1 and the high speed esses that follow turn 2.

"COTA is also a challenging track for the power unit set-up as the 20 turns vary in character and are infused with undulation," he said. "Overall it provides us with a very atmospheric Grand Prix weekend with enthusiastic fans.

McLaren racing director Eric Boullier said that he was also looking forward to the coming event in Austin, Texas - especially as it built on encouraging signs for the team at Sochi after what has been a long and difficult transitionary season as they adapt to their new engine partners.

"We can’t be too pleased with taking home two points at the last grand prix in Russia, but it does go some way to validating the relentless hard work being undertaken by every member of the McLaren-Honda team, and the constant strive for better reliability and trouble-free weekends," he said.

"It also means we go to Austin on the back of an encouraging weekend and hungry for another more positive performance as we near the end of the season.

"Both Fernando and Jenson have made some great starts in the past few races, so it’ll be interesting to see how we fare there with the unique challenge of COTA’s uphill turn 1.

"Its power-hungry, fast straights and corners definitely won’t be easy on our package, but our car’s strengths lie in the twisty, precise infield sections, so we’ll focus on a set-up to make the most of what we have there."

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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.