Honda boss Yamamoto: 'With McLaren we would never have become successful'
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Would McLaren have watched with some jealousy as the once-vilified Honda won the world title with Max Verstappen? No doubt no one in the British camp will say out loud that they regret parting ways with Honday, but in any case, Honda and Red Bull are not mourning that McLaren broke with the Japanese company.
Right track
Earlier this week, Jenson Button questioned whether McLaren had parted ways with Honda too soon. It is true that the results and reliability of the Honda engine were poor in the first few years, but in the end Honda did manage to find the right formula. What if McLaren had just waited a bit longer?
The 'what if' scenario remains forever unknown, but Honda director Masashi Yamamoto thinks that separating from McLaren was ultimately the right thing to do. “Even if we had continued with the McLaren project, I don’t really think we could have been successful, nor McLaren either,” Yamamoto says in an interview with The Race.
Damage too great
According to Yamamoto, the damage that occurred in the early stages of the collaboration with McLaren was too great to repair. He told the website that with Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso, there was a good and logical understanding from the start. “That was a restart and we needed it", Yamamoto says, and it led to the world title.