McLaren-Honda in ’terrible trouble’ - Brundle

McLaren-Honda has found itself in "terrible trouble" ahead of the 2015 season.

That is the view of former team driver Martin Brundle, observing that McLaren has struggled simply to run its newly works Honda-powered MP4-30 in testing.

Not only that, star recruit Fernando Alonso is missing the Melbourne season opener, amid rampant speculation about the cause of his Barcelona crash.

"There are even a few people saying Alonso doesn’t want to get in it yet," Brundle, now a leading British television commentator, told the Express newspaper.

"They are in terrible trouble, aren’t they?"

But he insists team supremo Ron Dennis is confident the British-Japanese collaboration will eventually succeed.

"You would think so," said Brundle. "Ron says to me that they (Honda) have the best facilities that he has ever seen.

"It looks like they have some misery at the beginning but I wouldn’t write them off for the whole season."