Honda R&D Co Ltd Head of F1 and Project Executive Chief Engineer Yusuke Hasegawa believes that McLaren Honda can continue their strong performance from the European leg of the F1 calendar into this weekend’s German Grand Prix.
Reflecting on the steady progress that McLaren has been making, exemplified by Fernando Alonso’s respectable seventh place finish at the Hungarian Grand Prix, Hasegawa commented that: “Though Hockenheimring is another power-oriented circuit, McLaren-Honda has continued to show progress and strength through every race of the European leg, and we believe that we can once again perform to the best of our abilities at the German GP this weekend.”
Hasegawa also referred to the need to sort out any reliability issues with the car before the summer break, and that McLaren believes that the can emulate the success that they had at the Hungaroring and score more valuable championship points in the second half of the season, which could see them pass rival teams of Force India and Toro Rosso to become the ‘best midfield team’.
“As a team, this will be our first race at this track so it will be a busy weekend to fine-tune and set up both the power unit and the chassis. It will also be important for us to fix any reliability issues that we have had over the past race weekends, and face the last race before the F1 summer shutdown with a positive outlook. Hopefully, we can repeat the good points finish that we had in Hungaroring with Fernando’s car and score more championship points before the second half of the season.”
