McLaren may have already decided to divorce with Honda at the end of this year, former technical director Mike Gascoyne has suggested.
Speaking to Sky Sports, the former Jordan, Toyota and Caterham man believes the change in tone to statements coming out of the British team in recent weeks, particularly last weekend in Canada, indicates there has been a marked change in their relationship.
“The rhetoric has been quite critical for the last couple of races and it just sounds like a decision has been made and they are just fencing around about how to make it public,” Gascoyne claimed.
Executive director, Zak Brown has been a lot harsher in his criticism towards McLaren’s engine partner, calling them “lost” prior to the weekend in Montreal as an upgrade, which has been promised since Spain, failed to be delivered. He would go on to say the team was “near our limit” and that the executive board had called for an initiation of the process to consider their future options.
“I think it just becomes a business decision,” Brown added. “As nice as the Honda contract is and I’m sure there’s lots of teams here that would love to have the contractual relationship, at the end of the day you start losing a lot of money in prize money which is all easily documented.”
He also claimed the team had lost more sponsors in the past few years than in the last decade, stating: “You’ve got two different types of sponsor losses, you have those that leave the sport, sometimes you don’t know if that was you or the sport or circumstances, but when someone leaves a team to go to another team what that means is they are happy with the sport, they’re not happy with the team.”
Racing director Eric Boullier also expressed his frustration declaring Honda’ problems as “completely unacceptable” after Fernando Alonso’s power unit failed two laps from the end in Montreal while running in the final points paying position.
Speculation is now rampant that McLaren is seeking a return to former supplier Mercedes, with meetings between bosses of both parties seen taking place at several races this year, however, whether the German manufacturer is prepared to offer their class-leading units to a potential title rival, a concern held by long-time CEO Ron Dennis, is likely to be a key hurdle to overcome.
