McLaren boss Zak Brown, who took over from Ron Dennis at the end of the 2016 season, believes his predecessor would have dropped Honda after a third year of dismal results.
Brown made the decision to drop Honda in favour of Renault for 2018 after a third consecutive season of reliability and performance setbacks, and believes Dennis would have done the same after failing to see the Japanese manufacturer get on top of its troubles.
"I think he would have," Brown told Sky Sports F1 when asked if Dennis would also have abandoned the Honda project. "It burns him inside as much as us not to see us winning races.
"He was here when those conversations were ongoing and I think Ron always has and always will have the best interests of McLaren in his heart, he is Mr McLaren."
The decision to switch, although announced in September, was put into plan before the season had already begun after McLaren knew it wouldn't be on the pace following pre-season testing.
"We knew we were in trouble in testing in Barcelona and we worked really hard for six months to try and find solutions that would give us confidence that we'd be much more competitive in 2018," added Brown.
"Ultimately, after trying many different things and many different ways we felt we couldn't get there. Three years is a long time in Formula 1 and so we needed to change the direction to get our team back at the top."
