The crisis deepens at McLaren-Honda

After McLaren-Honda's troubled start to pre-season testing, this was supposed to be a chance to begin anew - wipe last week's slate clean, show Formula 1 that this alliance means business.

To start with, things looked to be going reasonably well. Stoffel Vandoorne was out on track on Tuesday morning, logging laps - 34 of them to be precise. This was undoubtedly a much better start compared to last week, when McLaren took all of day one to rack up 29 tours of the Barcelona circuit.

Then the MCL32 disappeared into the garage, and did not reappear for several hours. As lunchtime approached, so emerged familiar noises from inside the McLaren-Honda camp - more engine problems; yet another engine swap...

Vandoorne eventually made it back out in the afternoon, clocking 80 laps in total and recording McLaren's fastest lap time in testing so far.

All's well that ends well, right? Well, not exactly.

This is meant to be the week teams start fine-tuning their cars, turning up the engines, and learning some proper lessons about how their new packages stack up before the circus heads to Melbourne for race one in a little over two weeks' time.

OK, we won't see the absolute extent of this picture in testing, and the development war is expected to add a substantial degree of extra performance to the cars before the first race, but three cars were straight into the high-1m19s on day five in Spain, including Felipe Massa's Williams, which last season was a close rival to McLaren on most circuits.

Vandoorne could do no better than 1m22.537s on soft Pirellis, slower than every other car apart from the Sauber. Sebastian Vettel did a 1m19.906s lap on that compound; Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo and Massa both managed 1m20.0s; even an off-colour Lewis Hamilton, complaining of floor damage on his Mercedes, was in the 1m20.4s.

McLaren is currently more than two-and-a-half seconds adrift of what constitutes the pace on a representative tyre type for this circuit - at best. What's more, when it does try to turn up the engine and extract more performance, it breaks down.

Honda is having to persist with its original 2017 specification engine while it investigates the root cause of its present problems. This has delayed introduction of the B-spec power unit that was originally due to run at this test. Meanwhile, the lack of performance and reliability is costing McLaren valuable track time and data on the chassis side.

"It does affect your development understanding," admits McLaren racing director Eric Boullier. "If you are not running fast enough you do not put the right energy into the tyres, you don't put the right energy in the brakes, your rideheight targets are different. There are a lot of consequences to running 15km/h or 18km/h slower in a straightline.

"But still we make most of the data we can gather just by running the car. This is to make sure the correlation with the simulation back in Woking is good, which then allows us to keep the same process to design and develop the car, then we can make predictions for the future.

"But it would be easier if we had the same speed as the others, because then you have a better understanding."

Honda called Tuesday's latest problem an "electrical issue", though Boullier appeared to contradict this explanation by saying at least two of the engine problems McLaren-Honda has suffered so far in testing "were the same".

We were told the first problem that surfaced on day one of the first test related to the oil tank design, and Autosport understands the subsequent problem discovered a day later was a failure in the combustion engine, believed to be related to the valves. So it is highly likely this third drama is also related to the combustion engine, given Boullier's comment. The combustion process requires a spark after all...

The obvious concern will be that Honda's winter development in this area, something it knows it needs to perfect to threaten the other manufacturers, has engineered in new problems that it now must battle to fix before the first race.

All the while the clock is ticking, the value of the track time McLaren is clocking up is reduced, and as Honda's new engine concept suffers the strains of unreliability on track, so relations between McLaren and its engine partner are creaking under the increased stress, with Boullier admitting the strain on the partnership is now at "maximum".

"Obviously we are in F1, we are racing, and we have to perform, so the pressure is huge," he says. "We cannot put a footstep wrong."

But that is exactly what McLaren-Honda is doing - mis-stepping through a V6 turbo-hybrid minefield that is blowing off an increasing number of flailing limbs. It recently parted company with engine consultant Gilles Simon, and it is not yet clear how Honda intends to dig itself out of this hole.

Boullier is hopeful Honda's next engine specification will address "part of this problem, or most of this problem", but in the meantime Honda has used enough engines in testing already to have burned through its entire permitted allocation for the season proper.

McLaren now lags almost 100 laps behind Williams, which set the pace on Tuesday and completed a race simulation, despite missing almost as much track time as McLaren in week one thanks to its Lance Stroll-induced car damage.

All the while, McLaren runs a reduced number of laps at reduced power, unable to work on the finer details of car and engine performance, not fully understanding whether its latest chassis is really working as well as simulations suggest it should.

Autosport technical consultant Gary Anderson was unimpressed by the MCL32's handling while watching trackside last week, but Boullier argues the Honda engine problems are a major contributor to that impression.

"I read some comments on Autosport, and, a bit like Trump 'Fake News', some comments about Turns 1/2/3," he says. "But it is not only chassis. Remember these engines are hybrid, which means very early back on throttle you have electrical power, which is [like an] on/off [switch], and then you have a turbo as well at the back. So, depending on your driveability, there could be some issues.

"We had some driveability issues, which means when you are back on the power you lose the back of the car, so the car looks nervous, but there is [actually] nothing wrong but the driveability issue.

"The car reacts well to any changes we have asked. The drivers on that point are quite happy. But still the car spec here is launch spec - we try little bits, but we will not run the full spec. The full spec will be run in Australia."

The question now is whether McLaren and Honda can use what little testing time is left to get this ailing project back on track. Honda will need to react quickly if parts of its new engine need redesigning in time for Melbourne, and will not be able to test its current potential while these reliability problems persist.

"Any laps you don't do, or any track time you don't cover, is a loss when you have only eight days," adds Boullier. "There is a minimum to reach, which is understanding the car and correlation. That is the minimum we need for McLaren, and then we can operate from this [because] we have experience and know what we can do.

"But ideally you want more mileage, because the closer you go to the limit, the better it is to have better predictions, or better simulation, or better expectations."

Expectations for McLaren-Honda are naturally sky-high, yet already it looks as though the uphill battle to meet those expectations is growing steeper by the day. Boullier says this ongoing saga has not yet reached a point of serious concern for the team, and publicly re-iterated McLaren's commitment to the Honda cause.

"We have to rely on our partner, and we believe that they will do it."

But time is running out to turn things around before the first race, and with every hour that ticks by the pressure on McLaren and Honda is ramping up.

At some point that pressure must be released, or else the whole thing is at serious risk of blowing up in their faces.