CjC wrote:Japanese are natoriously honest, they won't cheat or bend the rules to gain an advantage.
Antony Davidson said on the sky commentary during Bahrain that Honda fell behind the other manufacturers in the V8 era engine freeze because the other manufacturers brought engine developments during the freeze claiming to improve costs or reliability but ultimately it was to improver performance and Anthony said that Honda was to honest to do the same.
If they still have the same ethos about engine development during the current engine freeze it could be a nightmare for mclaren.
Honda left the sport because they weren't winning, despite having one of the biggest budgets around. That is the plain and simple fact. Another team that left because they weren't winning was BMW. Toyota did the same thing.
For any company to pour in Hundreds of Millions of Dollars and not have anything for show for it except a few podiums is not worth it.
Secondly, while I agree Japanese are notoriously honest, Honda also didn't miss any tricks to win. (Case in point, running their cars underweight in San Marino in 2005).
As for the current situation at McLaren, I truly believe that Ron Dennis will bring back the ruthlessness that McLaren was famed for (be it politicking or winning at all costs). While merc will withhold information from McLaren for the duration of this year, what they can't withhold is the telemetry data. They cannot also not allow Mclaren to take a look at the engine from a performance point of view. They can run different maps on the engine to see what feedbacks they can get. They can test the limits of the current engine.
They can then take that data (which is McLaren's IP and not Mercedes's) and give it to Honda. Honda can then work backwards and create their engines. They also have the time to figure out how get the engine to to be at RPM limit (15000 whereas most engine right now are only using 12500 revs) without using too much fuel etc.
Merc, Renault and Ferrari would also be fine tuning their engines for next year. But the only positive I see is that while there will be some homologated parts for the three current engine manufacturers that they cannot change, Honda will be able to do what it pleases till the last day of testing. Will all this combined make Honda the most powerful engine next year is hard to say, but for sure, they will not be lacking in any department to the current Manufacturers.
Mclaren doesn't have an official sponsor, the new bites put on the car doesn't work, and they gave Whitmarsh 10.000.000 dollars for leaving Mclaren and keep his mouth closed. Very, very dissapointed. Ron should have let hip speak whatever he want, and not waste the money on him. 
