While many believe McLaren's extremely compacted engine bay design was over-ambitious and at the root of Honda's many power unit troubles, the Woking outfit's racing director Eric Boullier disagrees, and believes a bold design was its only viable solution to challenge Mercedes.
From the outset, McLaren packaged the rear end of its MP4-30 contender extremely tight, forcing Honda engineers in turn to reduce the space between crucial components of its power unit, a design imperative which many believe had a bearing on the engine's persistent reliability and performance issues.
Boullier however defended McLaren's non-conservative and "size zero" concept.
"In principle – if you want to beat Mercedes, you have to do something better," said Boullier. So the way we decided to design and work was to go another path. Over ambitious? I think it is too early to say it is. We have to wait.
"Don't forget, during the season we could not change everything we wanted to on the engine. One of the basic elements involving recovery of energy from the engine was not delivering what was expected, and that did hurt us a lot – because it costs seconds per lap during the race."
Boullier also contradicted the idea that Honda was forced to compromise to extremes when it came to the design of its hybrid engine.
"We told them we wanted the tightest car as possible. But we never imposed on them in terms of size of whatever."
The Frenchman believes a season of trials and errors had led to a more mature partnership between McLaren and Honda, and one which will undoubtedly bear the fruit of its labor.
"Maybe in the pain you build a stronger relationship with your partner. With Honda, we have a much more mature relationship.
“The positive as well is that Honda understood the commitment they need to be winning one day. They have readjusted a little bit their resources level, which is good, so there are some positives out of this.
“As for the company itself, McLaren, we have regrouped together and we have changed what we needed to change in the way we operate. If you look at the performance over the season, we have caught up on the top guys. We caught up with restricted regulations, so there are some positives in some way.
"But we have had to take the pain together and we will come out of this mess much stronger, and much more efficient as a one-team act."
Key dates for the 2016 F1 season
Playing the joker: Sebastian Vettel
Technical feature: All of the 2015 F1 steering wheels
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