Ron Dennis apologises for McLaren-Honda F1 2015 struggles: ‘You were right, I was wrong’
McLaren boss Ron Dennis in a press conference at Honda HQ in Tokyo in February 2015
Eric Boullier, the former McLaren team boss, has revealed that Ron Dennis apologised to him for dismissing concerns about Honda ahead of the 2015 F1 season.
McLaren reunited with Honda in 2015, almost three decades after the pair dominated F1 with the likes of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Ron Dennis apologised as ‘terrible’ McLaren-Honda reality dawned in early 2015
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Despite McLaren boasting an all-star driver pairing of Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button, its reunion with Honda proved disastrous with the Japanese manufacturer’s engine proving slow and unreliable.
Both parties went their separate ways at the end of 2017, by which time Dennis had cut ties with McLaren. Boullier would follow his boss out the exit door the following year.
Boullier has revealed that he aired reservations over Honda’s F1 engine after several visits to Japan over the course of the 2014 season, claiming Dennis was dismissive of his concerns.
However, Dennis issued an apology to Boullier in early 2015 after McLaren’s worst fears proved correct in pre-season testing.
Boullier told Motor Sport magazine: “I remember arriving back in Woking from a visit to Honda’s Formula 1 headquarters in Japan sometime in 2014 and asking Ron Dennis: ‘How is it possible that Honda will be ready to compete with Mercedes and the others as early as next year when they are clearly still so far behind?’
“Ron replied: ‘Don’t worry.’
“Later, I revisited the Honda plant and I called Ron from there.
“‘Come here and see for yourself,’ I said to him. But, again, Ron assured me that it would all work out OK.
“But it couldn’t and it didn’t. Honda just weren’t ready. They had begun work on their Formula 1 project at the end of 2012.
“Ferrari and Renault had started in 2010 and Mercedes had started in 2009. The Honda guys were miles behind.
“When we went testing at Jerez in February 2015 – and we were terrible: slow and unreliable – Ron called me and said: ‘You were right and I was wrong, Eric. This is probably the first time I’ve ever apologised to a Frenchman.'”
McLaren went on reclaim title glory in 2024, collecting a drivers’ and constructors’ championship double for the first time since 1998 last season.
Honda, meanwhile, enjoyed a highly successful partnership with Red Bull, powering Max Verstappen to four consecutive titles between 2021 and 2024.
The Japanese manufacturer has entered a new technical partnership with the Aston Martin team ahead of the 2026 season.
It marks an official return to F1 for Honda, which withdrew at the end of 2021 but continued to provide technical support to Red Bull until the end of 2025.
Honda recently became the first manufacturer to publish images of its F1 2026 engine ahead of a launch event in Tokyo on Tuesday.
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