"McLaren Honda competitive would be Houdini-like" Coulthard
David Coulthard, former F1 driver, spoke about the problems that Fernando Alonso's team were having and cannot see them improving enough for the upcoming season.
Honda issues signal poor season for Alonso and co.
With 150 races for McLaren under his belt (a total of 246 races in his F1 career), David Coulthard is the longest-ever serving of the team's drivers. But the man who enjoyed 12 wins with them cannot see the current drivers - Spain's Fernando Alonso and Belgium's Stoffel Vandoorne - making much of an impression this season.
"The issues they have with the Honda power unit are just so big," said the Scotsman during a Channel 4 promotion. "They have reliability issues and a lack of horsepower - they don't really go hand in hand with development.
McLaren too far off pace
"They'll improve but they're so far away it would be Houdini-like if they were able to come back and genuinely be competitive this year just because the pace of the racing season."
And the driver-turned-pundit, like many is not sure whether the his team may drop their current partner.
"McLaren will [stick around], but whether Honda do or not is another question," he said. "They've made the commitment, it's cost them a lot of money, they're on the global stage but they're not on the stage to fail. At the moment, that's what they're doing."
Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull
In term of which team will go on to succeed this year, Coulthard narrowed it down to three:
"Your three teams to easily pick out, of course, are Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull. It's difficult to imagine how a Williams or any other team can seriously challenge the frontrunners and the team who continue to underperform is McLaren."
You'll be able to follow all the action from the first race of the season live with AS English on 26 March 2017.