I think you'll find I'm not dooming the engine before it's been shown, just using logical arguments stating both best and worst case possibilities. Worst case is they have as bad a test as RBR last year but without the other 3 teams(2 in the first test) doing laps either, meaning their worst case is significantly worse than RBR's last year. The best case is they have really pretty good testing which lets say would be averaging 30 laps a day this test, maybe 60-70 a day in the other two tests. This is quite clearly less than any other engine did or can achieve because it is still a single car.
Regardless of best or worst case scenario they will lack significant data, running, bug funding than any other team.
Think about last year, maybe RBR have an electrical fault and so do TR, but it's a different fault, two engineering teams help find it and a Renault team in both garages help. They find both bugs and fix them, but for both teams the fix from the other cars engine gets applied to their team also. So they don't run into that bug next time they go out and lose another several hours tracking it down.
Even if the Honda is a great engine, Mclaren are going to even in the very best case, lack a huge amount of track time compared to every other team in regards to the engine, worst case as said, will be far far worse than what RBR faced.
I don't think anyone can sensibly disagree with that. There will also be a chance, however infinitesimally small, that Honda from tomorrow onwards have every single bug and electrical fault found, Mclaren to, and run perfectly with zero reliability problems to the end of the season. I don't think anyone would sensibly disagree with me that situation is so extremely unlikely as to be discounted entirely.
Factor in the car as well, when the car has faults, not the engine itself(as we're told today) they lost hours and hours of running. Even a perfect fault free engine could end up barely running due to other issues with the car itself, a crash, an electrical fault, a fuel pump dying, suspension breaking, etc, etc.
Are Mclaren-Honda expecting to win the world title this year? The answer is no, not one employee will tell you that they are... so I don't see why your point is valid, they've come off the back of two/three horrible seasons, and now have an entirely new challenge, far greater than they've faced in a long time... I think it's more a learning year with the scope to hopefully snatch a few podiums, and you never know, maybe even a win... you write as if they are up ****'s creek because they must be winning races this year or something, when that isn't even the case, that's the long term objective from the team, but at present its about laying down the foundations....
Look at Merc in their first couple of years back on the grid, they went through a HUGE rebuilding phase from being no where....
A) Getting the best drivers they could
B) Hiring the best personnel they could
C) Spending years putting that together
D) Being successful as a result of A, B and C.
Sound familiar?
The advantage that Mclaren have is that they understand what went wrong with the car last year, as Mark Hughes and Scarbs have factually pointed out, they have a clear understanding of why the car wasn't balanced for front-turn-in and how they went wrong with the butterfly suspension creating too much drag.
The car looks a HECK of a lot tighter this year, if we can get through some laps without any over heating that's a big accomplishment. There are some nifty aero tweaks, and the car looks a lot more aggressive, and quick, ultimately.
They also understand how the V6 engine works from last year, the Honda is an improvement on it, but it's not as though they've been building the engine from scratch with no idea as to what should make it as powerful as possible... they have all the data from the Merc engine, and have had it for a long time, so they've been able to build on it and increase the performance window.
Allied with a revised chassis and aero design from Peter Prodromou and his team and there is potential for this car.
