McLaren and Honda


The German magazine Auto Motor und Sport is a well-respected outlet and it is reporting that it has picked up rumours that suggest that McLaren may be trying to put together a new alliance for the future with Honda, which was its partner back in the 1980s and 1990s, when the team enjoyed huge success. The report says that the aim is for McLaren to use a Honda V6 Turbo in 2014. This would not be a surprise. The current deal with Mercedes Benz goes until 2015 at least but this can be terminated. The company is just going through the motions of buying the final 16 percent of the team that was previously owned by the German car manufacturer, the German competition authority began looking at the final transaction last week and clearance is expected shortly. The team is thus in a position to negotiate new deals as it pleases. There has been talk of the team doing its own thing on the engine front but this would be very expensive and the argument in Woking is that the logic of a racing engine department would require the sale of a lot more cars than is currently the case. A new alliance with a manufacturer is the logical next step if there is no in-house plan and Honda is an obvious choice for an engine. There have been rumours from Japan for some time that Honda was planning to return to F1 and is ready to go as soon as the board gives the go-ahead. The new generation engine with green technology to the fore is just what Honda wants to be associated with.