Reliability can be fixed for Melbourne - Honda

Honda is confident it can fix its reliability problems by the Australian Grand Prix but admits it will take longer to address its performance deficit.

Having changed its power unit concept in order to give itself more development potential in future, Honda was expecting to make a step forward this year. However, pre-season testing saw a number of problems limit running for McLaren in Barcelona, while the power output was also disappointing compared to the Japanese manufacturer's rivals.

While McLaren completed the lowest mileage across both pre-season tests by some distance, Honda's head of F1 project Yusuke Hasegawa has confidence the power unit will run more reliably at the first race.

"The biggest disappointment point is our performance level, especially the power performance level is not competitive," Hasegawa told RACER during an exclusive interview. "The reliability issues I think we can solve before Melbourne. At least the problems we have had, we applied some countermeasures for those and it should be all right.

"But in just two weeks it is very difficult to squeeze more power and performance [out of the current specification]. So from the point of view that we are thinking the concept is a very good direction, in a few grands prix we may introduce some more updates to get some more power."

With Honda having previously struggled for mileage during pre-season testing over the past two years, Hasegawa says it is well prepared to react quickly to the problems it is currently facing.

"Yes, of course," Hasegawa replied when asked if recent experiences will help rectify the situation. "Although we didn't have the same issues on the dyno, in general the issues are not brand new to us in each area. We have some experience and we have some countermeasures so I think we can react to that."

McLaren completed just 425 laps across the eight days of pre-season testing, leaving it 159 laps adrift of the next team – Toro Rosso – and leaving it having achieved just 39% of the Mercedes total of 1096 laps.

Reiterating his belief the power unit will be more reliable in Melbourne, Hasegawa added: "But just being reliable doesn't make the driver happy!"