Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Wet weather could mask Honda progress

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Fernando Alonso warns wet weather could mask any progress made by Honda with its updated power unit at the United States Grand Prix.

Honda introduced a new specification of power unit in Russia, with Alonso testing the upgrade during FP1 but not racing it. With the Spaniard set to race the new engine in Austin, Jenson Button - using the old specification - admits he hopes his team-mate "annihilates" him as a result. However, with heavy rain predicted throughout Friday and Saturday, Alonso warns any steps forward could be hidden.

"With the weather forecast there will be a question mark of how the performance will be," Alonso said. "If we are 17^th we don’t know if we didn’t use the track at the right time in the damp and wet. If we are seventh maybe it is the wet conditions that help us in terms of performance.

"So it is difficult to know exactly what is the step really on the engine, and also on the aerodynamic side because we have some new parts here that are quite interesting, so we have many things to discover this weekend, and with a the very limited running we will probably have on the track we will have to guess a little bit and pick out the best things."

And Alonso says he is unsure how strong the McLaren is in the wet at the moment, even if theoretically wet weather should help an underpowered car.

"Yes, it should be a good opportunity for us. But in terms of comparing one spec to another it will be a little bit more difficult. And in terms of comparing upgrades on the aerodynamics it is difficult because you don’t have the same conditions in two laps, so you cannot really compare and you need to guess a little bit. Hopefully we can do well.

"In wet conditions anyway there are some variables and some things that always are a little bit out of control. You need to be a little bit lucky, you need to see there are some cars that historically have been performing well under the wet conditions like Toro Rosso, like Red Bull that historically even in 2008, 2007, 2006 they seemed to be quite quick in those conditions. So we will see how this McLaren performs in the wet. It will be the first time in qualifying I guess or maybe in practice to run in the wet and we’ll see."

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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.