McLaren-Honda will continue with its "size zero" approach to packaging its power unit next year.
Honda's return to Formula One this year has been marred by reliability issues as well as a significant gap in performance to its rivals. The Japanese company has taken an aggressive approach to its power unit design, with a tightly packaged layout aimed at minimising the size of the rear of the car. Although the design created problems for the team this year -- specifically with its turbo and MGU-H -- Honda is confident it can rectify those issues while maintaining the "size zero" philosophy that it believes will one day challenge for wins.
"We keep the philosophy and concept of the size zero package and we improve on it next year to have a more sophisticated size zero," Honda motorsport boss Yasuhisa Arai told F1i.com. "It's very difficult because we're almost at zero! But we use that particular design, a very specific and aggressive design, and we should keep that.
"We need more improvement but during this year I felt a big improvement on both sides, the engine and the chassis and aero. At every race we tried a lot of parts and we have a lot of data, and I hope that we can make a better package for next year."
Although the "size zero" philosophy remains intact, Arai said Honda will make changes to the layout of the engine over the winter to combat the problems it found this year.
"In the middle of the season in August we found out what our weak point was in a more concrete way. Even though we understood that our package's weakness came from the MGU-H and ERS deployment, it had been a struggle to pinpoint the cause. Fortunately, in August everything became clear and we were free to start fully rectifying the situation.
"It had a huge impact because with the discovery we realised that in the races and testing we need more energy to actually use the deployment. But in the meantime we feel we cannot change the turbo and the MGU-H in the actual season because it is a layout issue, so it is very difficult to change everything. So we realised it but could not change it."