McLaren CEO Zak Brown has fired a warning shot to their power unit supplier Honda stating that the team is ‘nearing the limit’ with the Japanese company.
As Honda announce they may not be able to deliver on their update package for the upcoming Canadian Grand Prix, Brown has spoken out against their partners by saying the team is having ‘serious concerns’.
Speaking to Reuters, Brown said: “Honda is working very hard but they seem a bit lost. We were only told recently that we wouldn’t have the upgrade coming (for Montreal)…and we don’t have a definitive timeline, which is concerning because the pain is great and we can’t sit around forever.
“We were eagerly awaiting this upgrade as were our drivers and it’s a big disappointment that it’s not coming. It’s not lack of effort, but they are struggling to get it to come together.”
Currently, the McLaren team sit at the bottom of the constructors’ championship as the only team yet to score in 2017 thus far. The Monaco Grand Prix represented McLaren’s best chance of points, however, both cars failed to finish the race.
Future options are currently being considered by the Woking-based team in order to accomplish the team’s goal of returning to the front of the field once again.
“The executive committee has now given us our marching orders,” added Brown. “We’re not going to go into another year like this, in hope.”
“I don’t want to get into what our options are. Our preference is to win the world championship with Honda. But at some point, you need to make a decision as to whether that’s achievable. And we have serious concerns.
“Missing upgrades, and upgrades not delivering to the level we were told they were going to, you can only take that so long. And we’re near our limit.”
While Brown has kept the future plans for the team under wraps, the McLaren boss has given a timeline as to when a decision is likely to be undertaken which could be as soon as the next ’90 days’.
Brown added: “A year in Formula One is an eternity. Three years is a decade. And you just can’t go on forever. Do I think you can win with a customer engine? I think you can.”
The McLaren boss was also questioned about the finances of the team with regards to the loss of key sponsors and the speculation of the rumoured $100 million a year that Honda is putting into the McLaren project.
“When you actually look at the impact of the loss of FOM (Formula One payments) money and loss of sponsorship, it starts to diminish the commercial benefits of what Honda brings to the table,” he added.
“And when you start to net it out, it doesn’t have quite the commercial benefit it might appear from the outside.”
