Fuel consumption led to ‘disappointing’ Honda pace

Honda says high fuel consumption proved costly for McLaren at the Canadian Grand Prix and led to a “disappointing” level of competitiveness.

Fernando Alonso finished 11th on a one-stop strategy but was nearly half a minute adrift of Sergio Perez in tenth place having failed to match his qualifying performance which saw the Spaniard reach Q3. Honda head of F1 project Yusuke Hasegawa told F1i high fuel consumption was the main reason McLaren was unable to remain competitive in the race.

“We knew we were around tenth, ninth or eleventh so it is not the biggest surprise that we can finish eleventh,” Hasegawa said. “But because fuel consumption is very tough in this circuit Fernando needed to save fuel almost for the whole race. That’s cost us very much, I think.

“It is obviously disappointing. We assumed that in a power circuit like this we would struggle, we knew that without any chaotic situation like the weather then we understood it would be difficult to get a point. The race proves that, so it was very disappointing.”

Jenson Button retired early on with flames coming from the rear of his car, with early indictions suggesting it was due to a gearbox failure as Honda saw no power unit damage.

“We are not sure. From the data point of view the engine looks OK. The engine was still running and Jenson stopped the engine by himself. The oil pressure was still alive, so we don’t know the cause. It was some mechanical issue I think but we don’t know.”

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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.