Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Honda: ‘Problems like a pop-up game’

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Honda motorsport chief Yasuhisa Arai says the problems faced during pre-season have been like playing “a pop-up game”.

McLaren-Honda completed just 124 laps across the four days of the second test at the Circuit de Catalunya, with its running blighted by an issue with a seal on the MGU-K. Speaking during an exclusive interview with F1i, Arai says he wants to improve the quality of some components because fixing one problem currently leads to another one appearing.

Asked if the problems were just part of the learning curve with a new power unit, Arai replied: “Yes, we learn a lot day by day.

“We always find problems like a pop-up game, and we think we’ve closed one problem and another one pops up. It’s very busy, you fix one problem and then you find the next one, and then the next. We need more time.”

But Arai is confident in the design of the power unit, agreeing with Eric Boullier that car development is behind but saying the engine itself is ready to be homologated.

“The car as a race car I think I have the same feeling as Eric. But the engine design work is almost finished, we can homologate next week but the data setting is still at the baseline. So things like the fuel injection, ignition timing, turbo pressure, there is a lot of data that we have to fix but not yet. We are still working day by day checking data and looking at the data to see what is good and what is not. They are very tough days that we spend doing that.”

Click here for the gallery from day four 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.