Honda plans to switch its focus from reliability to delivering more power in the second half of the season.
Unreliability has plagued the first season of McLaren and Honda's renewed partnership and has seen both Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button take engine penalties before the half-way point of 2015. The team has just five points from nine races and has spent much of the year focusing on reliability rather than performance, with several races being viewed as extended test weekends.
Honda boss Yasuhisa Arai is confident the manufacturer is over the worst of its reliability problems.
"Now we have the first half of the season finished and will look to make another step in the second half," he said. "McLaren have a new aero package with the short nose and we will update our power unit for the second half of the season and get more competitive and chase down the front of the field."
Asked if that meant the focus had turned to improving engine performance, Arai added: "Yes, more performance. The reliability is almost fixed, but every day there are small problems that pop up, but our main concern was to finish. Now we turn to the power side to get more competitiveness."
McLaren has admitted to placing increased pressure on Honda to deliver in the past few races. Honda still has seven tokens to use this season to find a step forward but Arai is not willing to reveal when it plans to spend them.
"It's kind of top secret," he laughed. "We have many ideas to apply to the power unit to get more power and more reliability this season using the tokens."