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As a Honda fan it's difficult to be optimistic given prior promises and expectations have not been met. But with that being said... things seem to be trending in the right direction. Reliability is improving. It seems like they are making progress on incremental improvements to the total power unit as well as ongoing mapping. Alonso may be playing tricks with late race engine modes to get fastest laps, but his gap to the front late race (even when not trying to get fast lap) is getting better.
If Renault performance remains static (not a given for sure), I can imagine Honda pulling even with them. Assuming there is not a catastrophic issues (such as Honda leaving the sport), I think they will generally get it right and be "in the mix", but I don't see them overhauling Mercedes before this engine spec ends (2021). But, I have read that people feel if they pull equal to 2017 Renault, that might be better than 2016 Mercedes. But everyone is getting incrementally better and this is 2017, so 2016 power specs don't count much unless your objective is to beat up on the customer teams using older engines.
My larger fear right now is Honda rushing an improved spec and introducing reliability issues. They are under pressure to demonstrate improvements to McLaren and/or other teams that may be a customer in 2018. But with things looking better and better, they may have some room to do the right thing and not rush improvements.
They were testing new stuff in the Hungary test days, but it is not clear if it was incremental improvements, or a test of the next spec (that is expected to have a number combustion chamber design and maybe a new turbo), or a combo of both.
Richard
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