Honda confident over new engine

The new unit, which is a version of the V8 the team were originally going to introduce in 2007, delivers major improvements in terms of its torque and driving characteristics.

Honda had originally hoped to race the engine at the Italian Grand Prix, but they ditched those plans after third driver Anthony Davidson suffered two major failures in Friday practice.

After further testing of the engine at Jerez in the past few weeks, the Japanese car manufacturer are confident that they are now on top of the reliability issues - and believe it will complete the two races it needs to for it to be homologated for next season.

"It has done 1500km in both Jerez tests and so we don't anticipate any problems," said Fry. "If it were to have any problems it would be a great disappointment for us.

"The great thing from China is that we have had all four Honda engines finish the race problem free, so hopefully we are now in a reasonable position from a reliability point of view."

Fry claimed that the benefits of the power-unit would only become obvious next year, once the engine has been retuned for the 19,000rpm rev limit that will be imposed.

"The engine is not at this stage much different in outright power," he explained. "It should be a little bit more driveable. I would expect it to be a small advantage but not a huge amount in the last two races.

"Where it will come into its own is when we are allowed to retune that engine for 19,000rpm. It is fundamentally a better design, so hopefully it will be slightly better than the one we used here in its 19,000rpm configuration.

"It has really been designed for that purpose - not for the purposes of a huge step forward in Suzuka or Brazil, although I expect a little advantage."