What does the future hold for Honda?

Japanese car manufacturer Honda have struggled since their return to Formula One.

Their partnership with McLaren has far from repeated the glory the two shared during the 1990’s.

Last season the Honda engine was periodically condemned by former two-time Formula One World Champion Fernando Alonso, most notably when he labelled the power-unit as a ‘GP2 engine’, referring to Formula One’s feeder junior series.

This season, it’s almost become a joke, in fact seeing Fernando Alonso on a deckchair sitting on top of a meme of himself on the beach could well have proved to have been seen as an embarrassment back in Japan.

And this on the same weekend that Sauber pulled the plug on their future partnership with Honda in favour of sticking with Ferrari.

Honda are keen to supply a second team in the paddock with engines, not least because supplying two teams will supply them with two sets of data to further develop engine unit and speed up the process of getting McLaren back near the front.

With Sauber now out of contention, Honda have confirmed talks are ongoing elsewhere in the paddock.

‘We are talking to teams – other than works outfits like Ferrari and Mercedes – to see if there is an opportunity to do a customer supply deal,’ Honda general manager of motorsport Masashi Yamamoto told motorsport.com.

‘Meeting the schedule to achieve this for next year will be tough, but we still try to look for the opportunity to do so in 2018.

‘If we don’t have a customer team, we want to continue with McLaren and then take on a customer team in addition for 2019.’

motorsport.com believe that one potential option could be Toro Rosso.

A move with Force India and Williams seems unlikely as they are supplied by Mercedes.

But according toSky Sports, even keeping McLaren for 2018 is looking unlikely.

Even though both Mercedes and Ferrari have ruled out supplying McLaren, there does remain one final option, Renault, who are ‘considered to be most likely alternative to Honda.

Meanwhile McLaren’s racing director Eric Boullier has intimated that a decision would have to be made over the next month.

‘Technically you could change an engine in 12 weeks, If you want to do the very best job then the latest is September, if you want to do the best design.’

Will Honda end up supplying two teams, one team, no teams in 2018?