Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Honda working to improve quality

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Honda is working to improve the quality of its components to help with reliability ahead of the first race of the season in Australia.

An encouraging start to the second test on Thursday was brought to an abrupt end when Honda discovered a faulty MGU-K seal, with a replacement part needing to be produced. Speaking exclusively to F1i, Honda motorsport chief Yasuhisa Arai explained that the quality of certain parts needs to be improved over the coming weeks.

“It’s a quality issue, not design related,” Arai said. “So our design is part of a very tight package for aerodynamics and it’s a very good design, but some sealing parts have some not so good quality so that’s the seal problem we had. Yesterday we got another part and put it on the car and made it run very well.”

When asked about the new part that was introduced on Friday, Arai said it was not a permanent replacement but just an adjustment to allow the team continue testing.

“It’s not the final part, it’s just a temporary fix. We’re still investigating how we can improve the quality with the target of Australia.”

McLaren's running on Saturday was limited to just 12 laps in the morning session after Button stopped on track when the engine shut down.

Click here for live coverage of testing from Barcelona

Feature: A closer look at the McLaren MP4-30

Click here for the gallery from day three of the second test

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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.