[Team] McLaren - can they compete?

[JacobP]

Originally Posted by littleman

The Honda predicament reminds me of the Footwork Arrows-Porsche disaster of 1991.

Based on the fabulous performance of the previous TAG badged Porsche motor
everyone in the paddock wanted to get their hands on the German companies new 3512 V12 engine.

It proved to be an absolute dog of a motor, resulting in Porsche limping away from F1 never to return again.Is Honda going to follow the same path..........?

It's an interesting and quite scary analogy. Of course, when I learned of Porsche's disaster first, my first thought was: "well, what did they expect from recycling the old V6 engine and then partnering with Footwork? Totally predictable."

What's truly shocking about the current McLaren-Honda alliance is that McLaren is supposed to be grand engineering powerhouse, and Honda has a year to observe and learn from the turbo V6 power units in action. I remember that some people from Ferrari camp were making noise that Honda is gaining an unfair advantage by entering a year after everyone switched to new engines. By now, it's clear that McLaren's current dry spell is a lot worse than McLaren's dry spell post-1993.