Second team would speed up Honda response

Honda's head of F1 project Yusuke Hasegawa believes supplying a second customer team would help the Japanese manufacturer respond to problems more quickly.

McLaren has had an exclusive partnership with Honda since 2015, but the supplier has struggled since returning to F1. While last year saw an improvement from ninth place in the constructors' championship to sixth, McLaren looks unlikely to be able to repeat that result due to a lack of reliability and performance from the power unit during pre-season testing.

The eight days of testing saw Honda complete a total of just 425 laps – the lowest of any engine manufacturer – while Renault managed 1,865 laps. The French manufacturer also had reliability issues and only managed an average of a little over 621 laps per team, but having three teams to supply aided its learning.

Asked if supplying a second team would also help Honda react more quickly to the problems it suffered during testing, Hasegawa told RACER: "Yes.

"Yeah, I think so. If we had more samples it is better. But to do that we need more resources in terms of engineers and currently we are not ready for that, but maybe we need to be ready."

While more customer teams would have helped to give Honda additional track time, it finds itself in a similar situation to previous seasons following a winter of struggle. Hasegawa says he is trying to use last season's power unit improvement as motivation for his employees to replicate that progress despite recent criticism from Fernando Alonso over the lack of performance.

"The top teams delivered a [high] level and last year we started [low] and we were improving. The ratio was very positive, but because we have changed the concept perhaps we [have leveled out for a while] and still we have a lot more room to catch up.

"But of course Fernando expects it like this [rapid improvement] and we should be. So we have to show our good performance, not just with words. That's more important."

In McLaren's race preview, Hasegawa says the Australian Grand Prix should show some improvement from Honda as a result of the work undertaken since the end of testing.

"In terms of performance, there has been room for improvement with mapping in order to have better driveability, and with further analysis we were able to make additional changes to be ready for Melbourne. We know we are heading in the right direction and we'll continue our efforts in order to increase our competitiveness throughout the season."