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Honda is running its engines on “very conservative” settings at the first race of the season in Australia for fear of damaging one of its four power units per car for the rest of the season.
McLaren will start its new partnership with Honda from the back row of the grid at the Australian Grand Prix after both cars qualified a long way off the pace. Jenson Button’s best time was five seconds off the pace of Lewis Hamilton’s eventual pole position time, highlighting the extent of the deficit to the reigning champions Mercedes.
McLaren has made clear that both car and engine are lacking performance after struggling for mileage in pore-season testing. Honda boss Yasuhisa Arai admitted the higher temperatures in Australia meant the team had to opt for more conservative engine settings compared to the already de-tuned engines it was running in testing as losing a power unit so early in the campaign would create bigger issues.
“We’ve done a lot of hard work, and finally we are in Melbourne,” Arai said. “In Barcelona I expected a good place for us in Australia, but unfortunately we don’t have the know-how and experience about running in high temperatures.
“We cannot lose the engine in the first race, so our data set is very conservative for the weekend, so that’s the reason why we are down on power with the MGU-K and the engine itself. That’s the reason why.”
