Honda's new head of F1 project Yusuke Hasegawa says the power unit manufacturer will still not be satisfied with clear progress this season.
McLaren was able to run reliably throughout pre-season testing this year in a major improvement compared to Honda's first year back in F1 in 2015. While the step forward in reliability was clear to see, Hasegawa told F1i during an exclusive interview that being in the midfield is not his target.
“As we are always saying, it is very difficult to tell from the test results," Hasegawa said. "But I am not very optimistic about performance. We were around seventh and sixth; it is not very good. It is good compared to last year, but it is not very good. So I am not satisfied with that. We have bigger targets still.”
And asked if last year's difficulties had led to Honda changing those targets, Hasegawa replied: “No, not at all.
"Of course our final target is to get a championship, we do not change that target. We made some of the steps we planned for, but last year we didn’t define particular steps. For this year we may set very realistic targets which is to be consistent to get race points.”
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