Can McLaren-Honda be saved from crisis?

Pre-season was nothing short of disastrous for McLaren-Honda. All within the alliance went to Barcelona with genuine expectations of a leap forward, that testing would indicate the car is good enough, and the engine powerful enough, to vault it out of Formula 1's midfield. Probably not yet on par with any of the big three F1 teams, but certainly in a position right behind them, with scope to challenge properly in the very near future.

Instead, McLaren returned from Spain demoralised, nursing broken promises, broken engines and broken spirits. Potentially, broken dreams as well. The team's awning was a study in frustration and disappointment.

Reliability was so bad that the MCL32 failed during its pre-test filming day, and completed not much more than a third of the laps Mercedes managed across eight days of testing - on the engine side, Honda's deficit to Mercedes (supplying three teams) is equivalent to more than 10,000km. Fernando Alonso completed fewer laps in total than Sauber's Pascal Wehrlein, who missed the first test through injury.

The new Honda engine, featuring a revised architecture and new combustion technology, lacks power to such a degree that it is currently weaker than the 2016 unit. Current estimates suggest Honda's deficit to Mercedes has increased from 80bhp at the end of last year to something approaching 120bhp, which is not far short of running without use of the MGU-K.

Honda made great strides developing its energy recovery systems in 2016, but its new 2017 'Melbourne-spec' combustion engine was so unstable during the second Barcelona test that it literally shook itself to death. When the severe vibrations weren't causing electrical failures, the ignition systems were detonating the engine at low revs.

McLaren-Honda struggled to string more than 10 laps together in testing, let alone attempt long runs or full race simulations, and the car was close to three seconds off the ultimate pace when you consider that Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen topped the timesheet without using ultra-soft tyres.

All this means McLaren-Honda starts 2017 seriously on the back foot. Instead of breaking back into F1's elite, it faces the very real prospect of being cut adrift at the back of F1's midfield group when the cars line up for the first round in Australia - with a strong chance that it won't finish the race either.

That would constitute a similar level of performance, and a worse result, than the first race following Honda's return to F1 in 2015. In relative terms it would represent zero progress in the space of two seasons. That is surely the definition of a crisis point.

Racing director Eric Boullier admitted that relations between McLaren and Honda are now strained to the "maximum", and that the team is experiencing "real pain" while it endures this unprecedented competitive slump.

The decision to ditch Mercedes customer engines for a works deal with Honda now looks like a terrible mistake. That McLaren has begun sounding out Mercedes about the possibility of a customer deal suggests the team has finally come around to that way of thinking.

But McLaren and Honda are currently tied to a long-term contract, understood to be 10 years, with Honda also committing significant resources to the project. Unless that arrangement is somehow dissolved or modified, both parties simply must find a way to make this work.

The best place to start is rapidly and significantly improving the performance and reliability of the power unit. Despite the severe difficulties experienced in Spain, Honda says it has already implemented what it calls "countermeasures" for its reliability problems.

"Obviously the problems we had in Barcelona limited our track time and put added pressure on our pre-season preparations," Honda F1 chief Yusuke Hasegawa tells Autosport. "However, we were still able to generate a huge amount of useful data - as was McLaren.

"We were not dealing with lots of different problems, despite how it looked from the outside, [and] already in Barcelona we were able to introduce some countermeasures - and we proved the effectiveness of these during test two.

"In terms of performance, there is room for improvement with mapping before Melbourne, in order to have better driveability, and at the same time we will continue to work on our development to generate more power."

But even if Honda does a better job in Australia, there are still wider problems to address. The Japanese manufacturer has made steady progress since its return to Formula 1, but not quickly or consistently enough. After such a poor start to 2017, it looks as though it will spend at least part of this year trying to repair the damage, rather than building on the solid foundations needed to challenge Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault.

McLaren is frustrated by Honda's apparent unwillingness to adapt its working practices, or work to the rapid deadlines demanded by an F1 team. Honda recently parted ways with consultant Gilles Simon, and although other F1 engine experts with recent experience of the three rival manufacturer programmes to Honda's are still working at Sakura, they are struggling to make themselves heard.

"They [Honda] only need one thing, which is to understand and integrate the F1 racing culture," Boullier tells Autosport. "What I mean by that is: the way we behave in racing and Formula 1 is all driven by this culture - by a calendar, by some fixed targets, fixed dates, lap time gains; we always try to go to the best solution as fast as possible.

"When a car manufacturer is running a project, you can have a few weeks' delay and it's not going to change the product, it's not going to change the business model. In racing, if you don't bring your upgrade for race one, in race one you will be nowhere.

"That is this racing mentality. It's as far as going to suppliers and making sure that if they do something in one month, the next time they do it in three weeks, and from three weeks to two weeks.

"In some ways the corporate influence is not helping [Honda] to be efficient. The more you behave like a corporate company, the more process is inherited from a corporate company, the slower you are, the less agile you are, which doesn't fit the racing culture.

"To deliver the first time is [what counts] in our world. That's the racing culture, which maybe [by] having the base in Sakura they [Honda] lack a little bit. This is why Mercedes is based in England, and I guess they benefit from the supply chain, from people with experience of F1.

"Our suppliers maybe cost twice as much [as Honda's] but are three, four, five times faster. We value more the time gained than the money spent. This is a different approach from the rest of the world."

There's mounting frustration within McLaren at what it perceives is Honda's inability or unwillingness to be flexible in its approach to Formula 1, and assimilate some of that racing culture Boullier mentions.

Honda's job-for-life approach to its employees also isn't helping, because it reduces positive pressure on them to perform. This ties in with an apparent mismatch of urgency between the two organisations, in terms of an acceptable timescale for achieving results on track.

McLaren urgently needs to end the drought of success that has afflicted the team since the end of the 2012 season. The longer McLaren fails to deliver proper results, the greater commercial damage it takes from lack of sponsorship and prize money.

For Honda, V6 hybrid turbo F1 is an R&D project that it wants to be successful at some point along the planned 10-year journey, but not necessarily immediately.

This is creating obvious tension between the two organisations, which already looks in danger of mimicking the recrimination that almost ended Red Bull's alliance with Renault at the end of 2015.

"Frankly I feel extremely sympathetic to what Honda is going through, including in their relationship with McLaren, which reminds me of something I've experienced," Renault F1 boss Cyril Abiteboul tells Autosport.

"I think McLaren needs to stay steady, Honda needs to remain focused. They have to go through this, and I'm sure they will have the financial resources and the talent to go through that.

"I am not feeling safe at all, even if I watch Honda. Frankly, anything could happen in Melbourne. We are doing everything we can to make sure that only good things happen [for Renault] - we believe we have a situation that's roughly under control - but these power units are so complex to control that we are really on a critical path, and it is important to stay focused and not take anything for granted.

"In that respect, it is only helping having three teams. I think it would have been better for Honda - it would accelerate Honda's resolution of the current issues - if they had other customers. That's up to McLaren and Honda to sort out."

Red Bull would argue the public slagging match that almost left it without an engine partner for 2016 was ultimately worthwhile, because Renault got its act together, hired Ilmor co-founder Mario Illien as a consultant, and put its F1 engine programme back on track last season, allowing Red Bull to win two races and beat Ferrari to second in the constructors' championship.

For his part, Boullier says McLaren does not intend to follow the Red Bull model of trying to 'publicly persuade' its engine partner.

"The Renault partnership was different for Red Bull, and obviously our partner is Japanese, so it's different," Boullier says. "I don't think there is value in being vocal and publicly criticising. We are strong believers in working hard behind the scenes, rather than publicly slamming."

But he does agree that Honda would benefit from a strong outside influence, such as that which Illien apparently brought to bear during his stint working with Renault.

"Definitely" is Boullier's reply when asked about this directly. "If you are good at what you are doing, and have always been doing [it] this way, and suddenly we ask you to do it completely differently, you always need some help, or support, let's say."

But in that case the other side has to be willing, even reluctantly, to accept the support. Honda has said before that it is happy to allow outsiders to work on its F1 project, but there is a difference between allowing something and accepting it.

What McLaren desperately needs is for Honda to get its act together, and quickly. Alonso has certainly demanded an "immediate" reaction, and there is a real danger McLaren's star driver could walk away when his current contract expires at the end of the season if the situation does not improve.

Alonso and McLaren can perhaps take heart from the way Honda transformed its terrible 2015 energy recovery systems into a potent weapon last season, but - as Renault knows all too well - finding real gains in efficiency with the combustion engine is the true challenge of this formula, and that's not an easy challenge to meet by any measure.

The real danger for McLaren-Honda in the short term is that Honda retreats into itself in the face of this latest setback, and that strides made in working practices and cultural understanding between the two organisations are undone as pressure on Honda to fix its mistakes ramps up.

"As Eric said during a recent press conference, we are in Formula 1 and we are racing, and we have to perform, so the pressure is obviously huge on both sides," says Hasegawa. "McLaren puts maximum pressure on us to perform, and vice versa.

"We believe in this partnership, as does McLaren, and in order to move forward it is important for us to work as one team and overcome the situation together. The priority is to maintain honest and open communication, and to continue strengthening all relationships between Honda and McLaren, despite the difficulties we are facing.

"Of course the situation we find ourselves in is not what we hoped for when we returned to Formula 1, but we are still 100% committed to our future in the sport, and our relationship with McLaren.

"Formula 1 is in Honda's blood. Indeed, it was our founder Soichiro Honda who said, 'Without racing there is no Honda', and this racing spirit continues to thrive throughout the company today.

"This is not a short-term project for us."

That's a pretty emphatic statement, and totally at odds with the idea that McLaren's renewed flirtation with Mercedes somehow has Honda's blessing. It's indicative of how far apart the two organisations are becoming in their worldview. But it's also clear things need to change quickly, or else any remaining unity could rapidly disintegrate.

Perhaps, ultimately, it needs to disintegrate from McLaren's point of view. Certainly, McLaren could benefit in one regard if Honda pulled out of F1, with FIA regulations - modified in the wake of Red Bull-Renault's near-split two years ago - now compelling manufacturers to supply teams left without an engine supplier, regardless of whether Mercedes is open to a new deal with McLaren.

That would solve one problem, but would also leave an estimated $100million hole in McLaren's budget (plus the cost of a customer engine deal), as well as sending a bad message to other manufacturers in an era when F1 is generally lacking their presence.

It's difficult to see Honda agreeing to some kind of stay of execution, whereby McLaren uses Mercedes engines on a temporary basis while Honda sorts out its problems away from the limelight, but in any case it shows how bad the situation has become that McLaren is now entertaining the idea of looking elsewhere.

McLaren knows it will be slowly and systematically destroyed if its fortunes do not soon improve on track - with or without Honda. There will be obvious hits commercially, it could potentially lose key staff to rivals, and eventually end up becoming another Williams - a former champion squad that has spent so long in the doldrums that it can no longer legitimately call itself a top team.

Williams knows all too well that if you fall too hard for too long, it becomes incredibly hard to claw your way back to the top.

McLaren feels it has built a decent car to this season's new regulations, but that will mean nothing if Honda cannot provide the necessary power, driveability and reliability to allow that performance to be extracted.

McLaren-Honda's prospects for Melbourne look bleak unless Honda makes a rapid breakthrough, despite the fact McLaren plans to bring upgrades to the chassis that are anticipated to be worth a second per lap.

"The real car will be tested only in Australia - it's going to be a big step," says Boullier. "Then we will see where we are, and will benefit from the GPS traces, so we can quantify what is [lacking]: engine, high-speed, slow-speed, medium-speed, braking, traction - you can find everything like this.

"Hopefully we have an OK package for Australia."

McLaren desperately needs that package to be 'OK' at the very least. Its alliance with Honda stands at a critical juncture, and the Australian Grand Prix should give the first real indication of whether this crisis can be averted, or whether there simply is no hope for McLaren-Honda in 2017.