Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

MGU-K still a problem for McLaren

McLaren-Honda's running during the third day of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya was again hit by MGU-K issues.

Following Jenson Button's early finish on Thursday, McLaren enjoyed a much more productive day on Friday as a replacement MGU-K seal allowed Fernando Alonso to complete 59 laps. However, Honda motorsport chief Yasuhisa Arai told F1i that the fix was a temporary one with better quality components needed.

Saturday saw more trouble for McLaren, with Button stopping on track in the morning session before a long time in the garage. Honda later confirmed that the MGU-K seal was still proving troublesome and would need further improvement by tomorrow.

"After the morning session, the car fed back MGU-K issues similar to what we experienced on Thursday, so we brought it back to the garage," a Honda statement said. "After a thorough check, we have decided to resume testing with limited power to the MGU-K.

"A new re-engineered seal is scheduled to arrive and will be applied later this evening."

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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.