Honda still perplexed by MGU-H failures

Honda is still unsure why its MGU-H is proving so unreliable despite being proven out on the dyno, following further penalties at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Jenson Button was forced to take a new MGU-H after Honda noticed some resistance within the rotation element, a problem which would ultimately lead to failure at some stage. While a report during the race weekend suggested Honda's head of F1 project Yusuke Hasegawa had revealed the part can only complete two races, Hasegawa clarified that is simply the trend at present but is not what the Japanese manufacturer has been seeing during testing.

"As a result [of the problems] we change the MGU-H every two races, which is very unfortunate," Hasegawa told RACER. "But the MGU-H was running on the dyno for over 5,000km. So I didn't mean it had a limitation of two races.

"We need to improve this situation. Although we had the result we can run on dyno, on circuit, we had many issues. So we need to modify. It's just a modification. It's already testing."

Despite working on a modified version of the MGU-H in order to improve reliability, Hasegawa says the fact the previous version shows up well on the dyno leaves him wary of using the new specification.

"No, until we get it and finish five or six races with that, it's difficult to say I'm confident. It's going in the right direction.

"We're supposed to bring some different modifications for Canada, but we don't want to change, we want to keep [the current MGU-H] unless we have a problem. Still it is not targeted mileage."

Despite failing to score in Monaco, Hasegawa says McLaren and Honda can take some confidence from the car's raw pace, with both drivers reaching Q3 before being hit by grid penalties.

"It's reasonably good. Unless we didn't get any penalty, definitely we had a chance to get a point or maybe higher. I think we could have got points with both cars. It's very frustrating. The penalty was everything, on both cars, especially Jenson. We're very disappointed to give him the grid penalty."

Button's 15-place penalty saw him start from the back of the grid and retire after colliding with Pascal Wehrlein, while Stoffel Vandoorne started 12th after a three-place grid penalty for a driving infringement in Spain, but the Belgian crashed out of 10th place late on.