Can Honda make McLaren win again?

This weekend's Japanese Grand Prix is likely to be another unremarkable race in another disappointing season for McLaren, but in 12 months' time the Suzuka round of the Formula 1 world championship will once again become one of the most important events on the Woking team's calendar.

That's because next season McLaren will end its 20-year engine partnership with Mercedes to link up with Japanese motor giant Honda - owner of the Suzuka circuit - for a second time, thus turning its back on what is currently the best engine in F1 in the process.

The last couple of seasons have been particularly trying for a team that is used to winning - no podiums in 2013 and locked in a battle with Force India for a lowly fifth in the constructors' race this season. All the while, Mercedes' own works team is heading for a dominant drivers' and constructors' championship double.

This is not where McLaren wants to be; not where it feels it belongs. McLaren's 'rightful place' is battling Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull (the other 'works' squads) for top honours.

This is something McLaren racing director Eric Boullier, who has overseen substantial reshuffling in his first season at Woking, believes can only be achieved with a works engine partnership. That's where Honda comes in.

"With respect to Mercedes, they will always design the best engine suiting their car, and the customer will get what they get," says Boullier. "Being a works team is a massive difference - it's impossible for a customer team to be world champion. Impossible.

Boullier says McLaren needs an engine designed for its cars © LAT

"Honda has moved, changed, everything we ask them to do to fit the performance of our car. Being a customer, even if you are [with] Renault having maybe 10 per cent customisation, it's not the same.

"Mercedes' engine and Mercedes' chassis are working together, and it's exactly what we're doing with Honda."

This season has been tough for a team as proud as McLaren. Its car has lacked downforce, and although it has F1's current leading engine in the back of the MP4-29, that power unit is optimised around Petronas fuel and lubricants (McLaren has a long-standing partnership with Mobil), and Mercedes must naturally be keen to avoid too much of its hard-won knowledge falling into Honda's hands.

Thus, it's practically impossible for McLaren to have as close a relationship to its current engine supplier as fellow Mercedes customers Williams (in which Mercedes commercial boss Toto Wolff is a shareholder) or Force India (which has a technical partnership with the Three-Pointed Star). This is something that absolutely won't be the case when Honda's V6 is slotted into the back of McLaren's MP4-30.

"They [Honda] are working already," Boullier explains. "If you look at the full range - fuel, fluids, lubricants, engine, ancillaries - everything is done by a works team throwing a lot of money to make sure we have the best suiting the engine, the best suiting the team.

"You can do a good job using a customer engine, like Williams for example, but still, if you compare the resources between us and them, yes they are doing a good job this year, we are not doing such a good job. But in three years we will be fighting with Mercedes and Ferrari, and the others will be nowhere, because this is how it is."

McLaren Group CEO Ron Dennis has urged the watching world to be patient. Honda has been out of F1 since 2008, and is a year behind rival manufacturers Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault in joining F1's fledgling V6 hybrid turbo formula, so will need time to deliver the expected results. It's a sentiment Boullier shares.

"We need to give the benefit of the learning process to Honda," he says. "They were in F1 not a long time ago, but it's a new project, a new engine, new technology as well. This is a huge programme to put in place.

"I think Honda will surprise everybody by the quality of the product they will bring, but still we have to fine-tune everything - the relationship, the experience -and you need some time anyway to build this. You can only rely on track experience."

Honda left F1 after a poor 2008 season © LAT

According to Boullier, it's this lack of recent track experience that means Honda cannot justifiably be held to the same standard as Mercedes, which has dominated the first season of these new regulations.

"Who can do it in the first year? Nobody," adds the Frenchman. "Mercedes already had their team four years, so I don't think this is comparable.

"Everything was working already. So when the new regulations came they made the best job out of the three engine manufacturers. But Honda is joining from a clean piece of paper. This is a big difference."

Although keen to downplay expectations, there is no doubt Boullier and everyone else at McLaren - which has been simultaneously ramping up investment in its engineering team, and pursuing top drivers such as Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel to lead the charge - is convinced Honda will eventually help return McLaren to the front of the grid.

"The association of McLaren and Honda will be very powerful," Boullier argues. "The project has been started early enough for the partnership to be very well cemented already.

"It's a long-term project, so we made it the McLaren and Honda way, which is very, very serious and very well done. They [already] have people in Woking, and we have people in Japan."

Turning your back on F1's leading engine supplier is a bold step, but when McLaren returns to Suzuka in 2015 it will do so with the status of a works team, and - it hopes - with the power to once again become a force to be reckoned with in F1.

McLaren and Honda first time around

Although his time at Woking ended acrimoniously, amid high-profile feuding with Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost knows very well the power of McLaren-Honda as a pairing.

Le Professeur won the third of his four world titles with the combination in 1989, and the Frenchman believes the renewed partnership will succeed - eventually.

"Having this kind of history is always a good thing," Prost tells AUTOSPORT. "You have the credibility and a bit of experience - even if the people aren't the same and it's a new generation.

"And Ron knows very well the Japanese mentality, and the team knows the Japanese mentality, which is not easy. That is a big advantage.

"It will be interesting. Can they be competitive in the first year? It's difficult to know, but it's going to work for sure."