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McLaren F1 team sets deadline for engine decision amid Renault speculation

BUDAPEST - McLaren says the next five weeks will be the key to deciding which engine it will use next season, with speculation mounting that the former world champions could ditch Honda and switch to Renault. Chief operating officer Jonathan Neale told Reuters at the Hungarian Grand Prix that "everybody is talking to everybody," but time was running out. "We've got to land those decisions in the next four or five weeks," he said, speaking from a design perspective and because drivers like McLaren's Fernando Alonso were waiting to see what engines teams had before committing to new deals. "I think there is a solution out there for everybody and I hope it's one that will be able to retain Fernando in this team." McLaren scored their first double-points finish of the season in Budapest on Sunday with double world champion Alonso finishing sixth, a day after his 36th birthday, and Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne 10th. The nine points lifted McLaren off the bottom of the standings just before the August break and factory shutdown, a result that Neale compared to scoring a goal before halftime. Alonso's future is a key concern, with the Spaniard out of contract and saying McLaren needs to provide a competitive car to keep him. Honda's power unit has been beset with problems since the partnership started in 2015, the engine neither reliable nor competitive. Hungary, the slowest permanent circuit on the calendar, reduced those shortcomings, but the next two races in Belgium and Italy are two of the fastest, where engine horsepower is of critical importance. McLaren is Honda's sole team in Formula One. A proposed partnership with Sauber terminated last week with the Swiss team choosing to stay with Ferrari. A split from McLaren could force the Japanese manufacturer out of the sport, but Neale hinted at an alternative. "You'll have seen the media speculation that there's discussions with Toro Rosso," he said. Toro Rosso use Renault engines, but a switch to Honda — which could bring welcome funding to a team whose Red Bull parent has considered a sale in the past — would free the French units for McLaren. The Renault engine has won a race this season with Red Bull and could satisfy Alonso, who won both his titles with the French manufacturer. The other alternatives to Honda are Mercedes and Ferrari, but Neale recognized that putting a Ferrari engine in a McLaren, the Italian team's historic arch-rivals, was highly unlikely.

McLaren confirms Alonso, keeps Button

Every year a big game of musical chairs breaks out in the Formula One paddock, as some drivers try to hold on to their seats, some try to grab new ones and others are left without a seat for the following season. McLaren has been extremely reluctant to announce who would be sitting in its carbon-fiber seats next season, but it's finally spilled the beans. McLaren was strongly rumored to have hired Fernando Alonso for next season, speculation over which was all but confirmed when the two-time world champion announced his departure from Ferrari. He's now been officially confirmed to be returning to Woking for next season. But the bigger question over who would be his wingman has now been answered as well, as the team has decided to keep Jenson Button on board for at least one more season. Long regarded as a top driver, Button started out with Williams back in 2000, then spent a couple of seasons in Enstone with Renault before switching to Honda in 2003, finally winning the championship in 2009 when the team went out on its own as Brawn GP (now Mercedes). He switched to McLaren in 2010 to form a dream team with Lewis Hamilton (who in turn left for Mercedes last year), but though Jenson has been unable to rack up another world title, he's remained a favorite especially of Honda's, which returns to F1 next season to rekindle its once-dominant engine-supply partnership with McLaren. Alonso, meanwhile, made his grand prix debut with Minardi (now Toro Rosso) just one year after Button, then switched to Renault first as a test driver and then got the race seat, winning back-to-back world championships in 2005 and 2006. He subsequently spent one tumultuous season alongside Hamilton at McLaren before going back to Renault and then to Ferrari, which which he spent five years, scoring eleven checkered flags to finish in second place in the standings, three times. Alonso's signing and Button's retention spell bad news for Kevin Magnussen, the young Danish driver who got his start with McLaren earlier this season after winning the Formula Renault 3.5 Series title last year. With all the other seats already spoken for, Magnussen was left with no choice but to accept a test-driver role with McLaren in the hope that he might be promoted back again in the future. McLaren-Honda prepares for 2015: laying the foundations for future domination McLaren-Honda is delighted to announce its new driver line-up for 2015: Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button.

Honda celebrates 30th anniversary of the NSX with a look back at how it began

In 1989, the baseball-loving Japanese dipped their bats in pine tar and came to the U.S. to take gigundous swings. That single year launched five legends: Lexus LS400, Infiniti Q45, Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo, Mazda MX-5 Miata, and Acura NS-X concept. The Chicago Auto Show (!) hosted the global debuts of the Mazda and the Acura. While Mazda celebrates the bygones with the 30th Anniversary Miata, Acura's reminiscing with a look at how the NSX — a car Motor Trend described in 1990 as, "[The] best sports car the world has ever produced. Any time. Any place. Any price ..." — came to be. The development yearbook opened in 1984, a year after Honda returned to Formula One as an engine supplier for the Spirit team, and for the second Williams chassis in the last race of the season. For the first time in the automaker's history, Honda wanted to build a production car with the engine behind the cabin, one that would demonstrate Honda's engineering prowess and "deeply rooted racing spirit." The sports car would also serve as a halo for the not-yet-launched Acura brand. The engineering team built the first test vehicle in February 1984 on the bones of a first-generation Honda Jazz. After four years of formal development, Honda parked the NS-X Concept in a conference room at Chicago's Drake Hotel in February 1989. This is where the media would meet the red wonder before the public show-stand debut. The F-16 Fighting Falcon-inspired coupe was built on the world's first all-aluminum monocoque, and its SOHC V6 ran with titanium connecting rods. Before the press conference, then-Honda president Tadashi Kume got in the NS-X, started the engine, and revved to the 8,000-rpm redline — a noise felt by everyone in the adjacent conference room attending a Ford press conference. Honda's PR man at the time yelled, "Mr. Kume, stop it! They're gonna hear this!" When Kume got out, he asked Honda engineers present why they didn't put their new VTEC technology in the NS-X. (What's Japanese for, "Why didn't the VTEC kick in, yo?!") They told him VTEC had been created for four-cylinder engines. Kume told them to work on a V6 application. More suggestions came from journos who drove the early prototypes at Honda's Tochigi R&D Center, who said the NS-X "could use more power." The development team had grabbed the SOHC V6 from the Acura Legend for the NS-X concept, and it put out 160 horsepower in the luxury sedan.