Honda encouraged by reliability turnaround

Honda was relieved to see its work on reliability pay off at the Australian Grand Prix but is still concerned by performance, according to its head of F1 project Yusuke Hasegawa.

Pre-season testing saw Honda struggle with an uncompetitive power unit, but of more concern was its inability to complete significant mileage due to poor reliability. McLaren's longest run during testing was 12 consecutive laps, but Honda managed to implement fixes that allowed Fernando Alonso to run in 10th place for the majority of the race in Melbourne before a suspension problem forced his retirement.

Asked if he is encouraged by the step forward at the opening race of the season, Hasegawa told RACER, "Yeah, it's very difficult to say encouraging but as a matter of fact we were about to finish the race without any PU issues. But we didn't get a point because we couldn't finish the race as a team so this is very unfortunate.

Admitting there were nerves ahead of the race weekend, Hasegawa added: "From that point of view it's much better than expected and I'm very relieved we could finish the event without big issues."

While he says the fact that that hard work on reliability since testing has paid off is "very encouraging," Hasegawa's relief is tempered by an acknowledgment that "results are very important for this activity."

Explaining the work Honda undertook after Barcelona, Hasegawa said there was not a single problem faced during testing that was not addressed.

"For every single issue we had to add some countermeasures. Of course we had not had the chance to check with some circuit running after that so I was not completely confident about that [until Australia] but we didn't leave any issues as they were, so that is what we did."