This is new technology and everyone is stretching to find what the defining limits are. It’s one thing to set targets and meet them, quite another to know if you’ve set the right targets. This is always how it is at the beginning of a new formula.
So, based on decades of observing this sort of thing, I’d say those comments do not mean what they are being interpreted as meaning. I’d say, it’s Watanabe’s second language and he’s striving to get across the inherent extent of the ‘challenge’ of the whole process. In the early stages of any tough challenge, it will by definition be a struggle. Similar ‘struggles’ you can be sure will be taking place at Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull to greater or lesser degrees. Furthermore, development in these early stages tends to progress in steps as breakthroughs are made. It is rarely linear. Each breakthrough made can completely change the ranking.
Where each of the PU manufacturers believe they are can only be an internal measure at this time. The natural behaviour for any properly competitive F1 engineer at this stage will be to assume that you are not ahead, that you may be behind and that you must continue striving hard to find the secrets. Any engineer saying, ‘Oh, we’ve cracked it,’ would be ridiculed for not understanding the extent of the challenge. Because the company up the road may have cracked it 10 times better than you. Competitive paranoia drives the sport forward.
But the way these things work, just because a comment could be interpreted in a way which would make a bigger news splash inevitably means it will be. So Watanabe’s comments will for certain have generated headlines suggesting that Honda is deep in trouble with the programme, maybe even manifesting the ghost of the company’s initially disastrous hybrid motor of 2015 and perhaps how this is potentially awful news for Aston Martin’s future prospects with its ’26 Adrian Newey wonder car potentially stymied by a feeble motor.
Forget it all. It’s just noise.