Alonso doesn't regret criticising Honda: 'You can't compare'

McLaren-Honda

In 2015, McLaren made the switch to Honda engines and, with Jenson Button and Alonso, the team had also assembled a star-studded team. Yet the project did not go according to plan. Honda had stepped in a year later than any other engine manufacturer and that backlog could not be made up easily. It caused a lot of frustration on McLaren's side.

The partnership continued until 2017, but eventually McLaren threw in the towel. Toro Rosso's Renault engine was taken over and Red Bull went with its sister team to see what the possibilities were with Honda. That paid off and the end result with two world titles for Max Verstappen and one for Red Bull Racing is well known.

Red Bull has success with Honda

At McLaren, Alonso was a big opponent of the Honda engine and openly complained about the Japanese. However, he said comparing with the current situation makes no sense. ''On our Honda engine, I had a lot of criticism back then. People who compare today's engine with the one we complained so much about back then have no idea what they are talking about. After all, the engine was developed quite a lot by Honda. That is also normal,'' said Alonso at De Telegraaf.

Alonso even believes that McLaren and he were at the root of Honda and Red Bull's current success. ''We helped them make the power unit better and also much more reliable. That takes time. I am happy for them that they are now successful and can help Max and Red Bull. Unfortunately for us, we were purely in the development phase at the time.''

The 'what if question' will always hang over Alonso. For what if McLaren did stick with Honda and kept faith in the manufacturer, it could now have had the success that Red Bull has. And perhaps even stronger, then Alonso could still have competed for a world title.