SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium -- Honda has confirmed the water leak on Fernando Alonso's McLaren during Friday practice at the Belgian Grand Prix was not related to its new engine updates introduced this weekend.
Ahead of the trip to Spa-Francorchamps, Honda spent seven performance tokens on improving the efficiency of the engine's combustion chamber and turbocharger, which should result in a boost in power for the rest of the season. The updates were fitted to both cars ahead of first practice on Friday, but within three laps of running Alonso's session was over due to a water leak.
A new power unit was fitted for second practice, incurring a 35-place grid penalty for Alonso's car, while an investigation on the original power unit found that the leak was caused by the power unit's MGU-H.
"For the Belgian Grand Prix weekend, we've introduced a new ICE with increased combustion efficiency and a new turbo/compressor combination, to increase power unit performance including efficiency for the latter half of the season," Honda F1 boss Yusuke Hasegawa said. "Unfortunately, during FP1 we found a water leak in Fernando's MGU-H and had to cut short his running time.
"Based on the situation, we assessed that the MGU-H issue was not a consequence of the update and therefore elected to replace it with the same updated spec for FP2. As a result, we'll incur grid penalties for the race on Sunday. Thankfully the team did a great job in preparing a new power unit to run in FP2, and we were able to get straight back out on track at the start of the session."
McLaren warned ahead of the weekend that it would struggle to match its rivals on Spa-Francorchamps' long straights, but Hasegawa said the performance on Friday was promising after the car's drag level was trimmed to compensate for Honda's power deficit.
"Today's sessions were focused on running the cars with low downforce and checking grip levels, and, despite the power hungry nature of the circuit, we were able to finish in our now usual midfield positions. The initial feedback on the power unit updates has been positive, so we'll look to our engineers to fine-tune for tomorrow's qualifying and Sunday's race."
As a result of the grid penalty, Alonso is expected to join Lewis Hamilton, who also has a sizeable engine penalty hanging over him, on the back row of the grid on Sunday. The Spaniard said he would do his best to keep up with the Mercedes driver and is hoping to unlock even more performance from the Honda power unit once it is in race mode.
"We'll be starting Sunday's race from the back of the grid, but we'll be trying our best to recover positions from there. I expect Lewis [Hamilton], who'll be starting next to me, will be quicker than me, so I'll try to hang on to his tail, put a rope around his car and get him to pull me through the field!
"I still don't have a feeling for the performance of the revised PU, as today we ran it only in conservative modes, so tomorrow we'll see how much we can push. I'm sure it'll be a step forward."