McLaren went through a lengthy lean spell in the 90s when Ron was in charge, somewhat ironically in part because Honda withdrew. Annoyingly the car still looks impressive.
I said I'd wait until the European season before I judged where Honda were at, as they were always playing catchup and appear to have potential, but given the lack of progress they've made since the opening 3 races it's hard to see how they'll get up to where they want to be.
They will get stronger and will be regularly challenging for points later in the season, but they were targeting race-winning pace by the end of the season, and that's certainly not going to be the case.
As Coulthard said in the commentary, they're slow, unreliable and thirsty. It's pretty much the worst case scenario. I guess at least 2 of those were connected yesterday, and possibly all 3 (lack of electrical power requires more juice, leaning the engine off means excessive heat), but still.
I did mention RBR in my original post, if you scroll up.
Yes, the work they are doing is pretty bad, though I think Newey has left them, so its not surprise.
I think Newey is still a consultant, but yes, the loss of him and the very highly rated Peter Prodromou to McLaren is hurting them.
McLaren have a reason for being slow, but Red Bull weren't that much quicker yesterday, and are at about the same pace as their identically-engined child team.
