Honda chasing 'more sophisticated size zero'

Honda motorsport boss Yasuhisa Arai says the target for 2016 is to provide a "more sophisticated size zero" concept of its power unit.

The McLaren MP4-30 was launched in January with the 'size zero' philosophy as the car featured a very tightly packaged rear end as a result of the compact Honda power unit. However, reliability issues in the early part of the year resulted in performance limitations throughout 2015, with McLaren scoring a total of just 27 points.

Speaking to F1i as part of an exclusive interview reflecting on the season, Arai says the concept will remain in place for next year.

“We feel a good pressure all the time," Arai said. "Good pressure from both great drivers, also from McLaren. I think it’s a normal situation and we are always having open discussions about what happened, which direction we should go etc.

"It’s very good communication and they understood everything, so we keep the philosophy and concept of the size zero package and we improve on it next year to have a more sophisticated size zero.”

Asked if that means targeting an even smaller power unit design, Arai replied: “It’s very difficult because we’re almost at zero!

"But we use that particular design, a very specific and aggressive design, and we should keep that. We need more improvement but during this year I felt a big improvement on both sides, the engine and the chassis and aero. At every race we tried a lot of parts and we have a lot of data, and I hope that we can make a better package for next year.”

Honda exclusive Q&A: Reflections on 2015

Romain Grosjean exclusive: From Lotus to Haas

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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.

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