Honda F1 boss to leave role at end of month

It’s day two of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya and it looks like McLaren-Honda’s MP4-31 has instilled a newfound confidence in both the drivers and the team, According to the official Day two report from Mclaren F1 earlier Tuesday, Fernando Alonso is happy to be back behind the wheel, content with how the car’s been performing.

“We’re in a much better position than past year, which is great”, he said afterward.

Ferrari’s four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel topped the timing sheets on the first day of testing while reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton put down a staggering 156 laps on the day, the most of any driver. This year we know how big the gap is to the top teams…so we don’t say such optimistic words.

“I think even by the end of this tet, it will be hard [to predict where we are]”, he said. “Today is more about having an understanding – there are lots of different things we have on the auto, which are all big improvements on a year ago”. That was the first priority for the team and for this winter, make sure that we went through the problems that we had previous year. We are on track and hopefully no more rumors. I enjoyed the day, but there is performance that we need to unlock in the vehicle.

“I’m looking forward to this new chapter in 2016”, Hasegawa said in a statement. “On the aerodynamic side there are some parts that are quite innovative and new, in our vehicle at least”. We need a little bit of time to mature the project, the package, and the power unit the same thing.

The F1 project will now be headed by Yusuke Hasegawa, while Arai’s other motorsport activities will be taken over by R&D and Sakura head Kenji Ohtsu.

But when asked if he would see out the season, which gets under way in Melbourne on March 20, with McLaren, Alonso said: “Of course and the next one”.

“The ambition is very high because I am not here just to travel around the world and jump in the auto and have fun on Sunday”. I’m here to win.

Fernando did not want to comment on the Honda management changes, saying that he had only just found out about them. When there are too many weeks, or too many months with no action on the track there is a unsafe tendency to be created from the news. I have some experience in the project but obviously the technical areas are completely different from that age.