[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

I am truly curious why you say that? Compared to last year they have made a huge stride forward with respect to reliability and performance (still not as good as the benchmark). And while people can be cynical and say "the drivers were paid to say glowing things", they were very happy with the upgraded power unit at Canada.

What evidence suggests they are NOT on the upswing? Note, my definition of "upswing" is that they are making measurable and substantial forward progress.


I take this to mean that after much of the season has been run that we can then look back and comment on how Honda has done. That is about looking in the past. I am talking about now. What delta has Honda produced since 2017 season end?

Given the limited number of power units allowed, teams can't really dribble out upgrades as we go. So I would expect maybe one more upgrade from Honda before the end of the season. And it is likely to not be as large as the recent one. I think what remains of the season is the question of the level of reliability.


I did a poor job in my earlier post, but my intent was to say that... frankly whatever is happening now or in the recent past with McLaren has zero relevance with respect to Honda today. And there are likely a number of vast differences between McLaren and TR in general (Alonso factor for one) and changes between one year to the next (such as totally new drivers at TR). So its a bit hard to compare them in some way that somehow pretends the only difference between the teams is the engine swap that happened over the winter. I would argue that given it's resources that McLaren remains a hot mess. They must be thankful that Williams is a total disaster to keep the questions off them.

Richard

The onus is on STR/Honda to prove themselves, if they are indeed on the upswing.