McLaren team boss Eric Boullier says the team's lack of competitiveness during its partnership with Honda has been hugely damaging to its credibility.
McLaren and Honda will split at the end of 2017, a premature end to what was supposed to be an all-conquering partnership. Instead, in all three seasons Honda has failed to deliver a competitive or reliable power unit to McLaren.
As a result McLaren has suffered some of its worst on-track results during the Honda V6 era, complicating the search for a new title sponsor which has been ongoing since the end of its Vodafone deal in 2012. Speaking to the official F1 website, Boullier said that was one of the main motivations behind McLaren's new deal with Renault, which will start in 2018.
"When you look at the last three years it's been a proper disaster for us in terms of credibility and getting new sponsors," he said. "And then you have to take the long-term view: in the next five years I am absolutely sure that we will go back to where McLaren belongs.
"And with this bouncing back we get our credibility back and it will rebuild our sponsor portfolio. It might take two to three years. We are ninth in the championship - with a top engine I think we would be fourth right now and just on the FOM money we could cover the engine side, so it will not be a big risk on the monetary side. Thanks to the shareholders who have been brave enough to take a sporting choice and not hurt McLaren. They could have said, 'Let's wait until Honda wakes up'."
Honda chief Masashi Yamamoto this week criticised McLaren, saying the company finds it difficult to adapt to change due to its size. Boullier thinks flaws in the partnership existed from the beginning.
Asked if he agreed with the perception in the paddock that McLaren and Honda have struggled to communicate together properly, he said: "I don't think so. Actually the idea was great: to revive the story of McLaren.
"I think it was more the approach to the project at the beginning. Things could have panned out completely differently if different decisions had been taken at the beginning - but this is always easy to say in hindsight."