Honda is targeting top-ten grid positions and better reliability this year, but admits it is keeping its optimism in check so early in the season.
Honda has brought big changes to its 2016 power unit, with a reworked turbo and MGU-H the main focus over the winter. At the first two days of testing Honda prioritised mileage over performance, but is hoping the McLaren-Honda package will be quick enough to regularly feature in the final session of qualifying.
"As I mentioned, we can't be very optimistic at this moment because we don't understand our position at the moment, but our objective for this year is to get to Q3," new Honda F1 boss Yusuke Hasegawa said. "We would like to get there - to Q3 - regularly. That is our target.
"And also the reliability is very important. Last year we saw a lot of issues not just in the performance but also the reliability. So we are aiming to update our engine with more reliability because it is very important to finish the race."
Hasegawa said the current power unit is not due any major updates ahead of the start of the season.
"Actually the specification is the same. We have already fixed our specification. Of course we will test some of the parts now and next week but because the homologation is fixed at the end of February we can't expect a big update."
Hasegawa is taking over from Yasuhisa Arai as the head of Honda's F1 project at the end of the month, but the development up until now has been led by Arai.
Asked if the new power unit was meeting expectations, Arai said: "It is difficult to say because it's too early. Of course we confirmed it all on the dyno but not in different conditions so we have to check carefully and we have to confirm the data - track data and dyno data - yesterday and today. Test one is the most important to check and confirm both data.
"We are taking a conservative approach, step-by-step, mileage, running. They're the most important things."