Alonso explains benefit of Honda turbo upgrade

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Honda’s turbo upgrade at the Canadian Grand Prix is focused more on race than qualifying pace, says Fernando Alonso.

McLaren will receive an upgraded Honda power unit as well as a new fuel from ExxonMobil in Montreal, with the Japanese manufacturer spending its first development tokens on the turbo. While the fuel is expected to deliver around 0.1s in terms of lap time, Alonso says the Honda upgrade is more focused on race performance.

“I think it’s just an update on the power unit with a new turbo that will allow us to have a little bit more harvesting from the engine,” Alonso said. “That’s always a good thing, but it’s not necessarily more power.

“Let’s say for a race situation it will help a little bit in managing the batteries or deploying a little longer on the straights. It’s not a big difference in qualifying, but let’s hope so for the race.”

And Alonso says Honda still has a lot of work to do in terms of bringing an increase in overall power output.

“I think it’s tough here for the fuel and it will be tough again this year no matter what harvesting you have. But everything is moving in the right direction, so it will be another step forward for us. It’s still a long way to go, especially in terms of power, which is the main limitation now. In terms of MGU-H and harvesting we are not so bad this year compared to last year, so this is obviously welcome and another step, but there is still a long way to go.”

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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.