F1 Strategy Group to consider aiding struggling McLaren Honda

In the upcoming FIA Strategy Group meeting, the agenda will be assisting McLaren Honda in combating their reliability and performance woes. At the Bahrain GP, Fernando Alonso’s team radio revealed that the car was hopelessly, hilariously underpowered.

They came to an agreement that the FIA would scrutinise the output for each power unit and if a deficit of more than 0.3 seconds at the Circuit de Catalunya was discovered, then they would have to intervene.

“We check every car of every lap of the first three races, we take the best of each power unit for each race, and then we do the average. That should give a power unit index of performance for each power unit manufacturer. Then we have a translation of this index for the Barcelona track, and this is what we will do. We transform this index to lap time and check the difference in lap time to the Barcelona track.” said Fabrice Lom, in a statement last year.

Although the McLaren team are saying that the car has been steadily improving, Honda’s story is proving otherwise. McLaren racing director Eric Boullier believes that it is a delicate subject and he says that the other teams will be hesitant to provide some form of aid because they are still rivals.

“It is something that we have to raise, we are in a position today where I am not sure everyone wants us to get more performance from the power unit, but I think it will be fairer for F1 to have a level playing field. I am not saying helping someone to beat the best power unit, but to be within this 0.3 seconds ballpark of performance. I think it will fairer and good for F1. It will be more attractive for other car and engine manufacturers to join F1, and for the fans, it will be much better as you will have closer racing on track. So it would tick all the boxes: except we are in a competitive world and I know a lot of people do not want us to deliver on that part.”