Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[ryaan2904]

Good news: Its been confirmed both RBR issues were an FIA spec part problem.

Bad news: gasly's engine failure was totally unrelated, it was an MGUK shaft failure.
It was rumored in testing that honda has a bit of an mguk issue.

Good news: MGUKs have not been homologated. So honda can add performance and reliability both simultaneously
Also good news, the fire was not the ICE. It was the mguk coolant oil catching fire due to mguk failure
Mostly confirmed on all this

[Hoffman900]

I would have a real hard time believing the resin in the lift pump would break down with 5% more ethanol content. Everything in the US is E10 since they banned MTBE as an oxygenator and the fuel issues people had early on were due to it cleaning gunk out of the tank, not plastics. If they switched to E85 that would be a different story.

Heating of the fuel could be an issue, especially depending on packaging.

Vibrations inherent to the Honda could also cause the fuel lines / pumps / etc to go into resonance. This is far fetched but you can observe this with side draft carburetor engines. If you are brave, stand next to the engine on the dyno and you won’t be able to grab the float bowl. The carburetor bowl will resonate at such frequency at certain bad harmonics that the fuel foams. The lift pump pressure is probably nothing wild. I forget what the injector pressure has to be. I recently learned it’s 5000psi in DTM. I would have to think about this a little harder before I put any stock as an actual failure mode.

I am not shocked to learn teams in general struggled some with the switch, especially if they, like Honda, are using a hybrid HCCI / TJI combustion concept. I believe Honda only made this combustion concept work reliably by having a fuel developed especially for it. Otherwise it was inconsistent and more a happy accident than anything going by Wazari’s posts.

It is interesting that the RBR cars complained of decreasing power prior.
If fuel was falling off, then the engine would be derating itself, but this absolutely would have showed up along pit wall along with fuel pressure (I have no doubt that is sent to pit wall as well) and I believe would have resulted in a grenaded IC much more quickly.

Gasly’s failure was sudden, so that looks to be an entirely different issue and if that is the cam driven injector pump, that is a Honda part / design (which goes back to my one hypothesis about resonance) as that is directly bolted to the engine and not soft mounted like fuel lines should be.

This is bullshit

Elaborate, please. Tell me why it is and offer up a sound explanation backing it up.

According to The Race, they basically ran out of gas due to miscalculation of the heat of the fuel at low fuel levels because they didn’t do any race simulations down to that level. I don’t know if that is true or not, but it is a theory.

[ryaan2904]

I would have a real hard time believing the resin in the lift pump would break down with 5% more ethanol content. Everything in the US is E10 since they banned MTBE as an oxygenator and the fuel issues people had early on were due to it cleaning gunk out of the tank, not plastics. If they switched to E85 that would be a different story.

Heating of the fuel could be an issue, especially depending on packaging.

Vibrations inherent to the Honda could also cause the fuel lines / pumps / etc to go into resonance. This is far fetched but you can observe this with side draft carburetor engines. If you are brave, stand next to the engine on the dyno and you won’t be able to grab the float bowl. The carburetor bowl will resonate at such frequency at certain bad harmonics that the fuel foams. The lift pump pressure is probably nothing wild. I forget what the injector pressure has to be. I recently learned it’s 5000psi in DTM. I would have to think about this a little harder before I put any stock as an actual failure mode.

I am not shocked to learn teams in general struggled some with the switch, especially if they, like Honda, are using a hybrid HCCI / TJI combustion concept. I believe Honda only made this combustion concept work reliably by having a fuel developed especially for it. Otherwise it was inconsistent and more a happy accident than anything going by Wazari’s posts.

It is interesting that the RBR cars complained of decreasing power prior.
If fuel was falling off, then the engine would be derating itself, but this absolutely would have showed up along pit wall along with fuel pressure (I have no doubt that is sent to pit wall as well) and I believe would have resulted in a grenaded IC much more quickly.

Gasly’s failure was sudden, so that looks to be an entirely different issue and if that is the cam driven injector pump, that is a Honda part / design (which goes back to my one hypothesis about resonance) as that is directly bolted to the engine and not soft mounted like fuel lines should be.

This is bullshit

Elaborate, please. Tell me why it is and offer up a sound explanation backing it up. I looked up your posts, I’m not expecting much.

According to The Race, they basically ran out of gas due to miscalculation of the heat of the fuel at low fuel levels because they didn’t do any race simulations down to that level. I don’t know if that is true or not, but it is a theory.

Amus, Scarbs and Horner, all confirmed its a fuel pump issue.
Mclaren changed their fuel pumps after quali, before the race.
Fia went far enough to take off the parc-ferme restrictions on the top 10 qualifiers, so that they could inspect the fuel pumps and teams could change them (mclaren) if they wanted.
Amus noted this issue during testing. Whether they reported it then or now, I'm not sure.

[ryaan2904]

Good news: Its been confirmed both RBR issues were an FIA spec part problem.

Bad news: gasly's engine failure was totally unrelated, it was an MGUK shaft failure.
It was rumored in testing that honda has a bit of an mguk issue.

Good news: MGUKs have not been homologated. So honda can add performance and reliability both simultaneously
Also good news, the fire was not the ICE. It was the mguk coolant oil catching fire due to mguk failure
Mostly confirmed on all this

Gasly's failure

[Hoffman900]

This is bullshit

Elaborate, please. Tell me why it is and offer up a sound explanation backing it up. I looked up your posts, I’m not expecting much.

According to The Race, they basically ran out of gas due to miscalculation of the heat of the fuel at low fuel levels because they didn’t do any race simulations down to that level. I don’t know if that is true or not, but it is a theory.

Amus, Scarbs and Horner, all confirmed its a fuel pump issue.
Mclaren changed their fuel pumps after quali, before the race.
Fia went far enough to take off the parc-ferme restrictions on the top 10 qualifiers, so that they could inspect the fuel pumps and teams could change them (mclaren) if they wanted.
Amus noted this issue during testing. Whether they reported it then or now, I'm not sure.

Cool, well I didn’t have that information available. I don’t stare at F1twitter all day (or at all). You could have just posted this to begin with…

It’s still ironic that it only caught one supplier out. Maybe that missed something in testing that the others saw. Who knows. I doubt we’ll get the real story anyway, just rumors from unnamed sources.

[ryaan2904]

Elaborate, please. Tell me why it is and offer up a sound explanation backing it up. I looked up your posts, I’m not expecting much.

According to The Race, they basically ran out of gas due to miscalculation of the heat of the fuel at low fuel levels because they didn’t do any race simulations down to that level. I don’t know if that is true or not, but it is a theory.

Amus, Scarbs and Horner, all confirmed its a fuel pump issue.
Mclaren changed their fuel pumps after quali, before the race.
Fia went far enough to take off the parc-ferme restrictions on the top 10 qualifiers, so that they could inspect the fuel pumps and teams could change them (mclaren) if they wanted.
Amus noted this issue during testing. Whether they reported it then or now, I'm not sure.

Cool, well I didn’t have that information available. I don’t stare at F1twitter all day (or at all). You could have just posted this to begin with…

It’s still ironic that it only caught one supplier out. Maybe that missed something in testing that the others saw. Who knows. I doubt we’ll get the real story anyway, just rumors from unnamed sources.

Sorry, knowing the root of the issues, I found the whole deep fuel-injection-hypothesis a little annoying

Also scarbs did say rbr never completed full race simulations in testing and also didn't run low fuel much and this problem is more prevalent with a low fuel tank. Maybe why rbr missed it

[Airshifter]

Good news: Its been confirmed both RBR issues were an FIA spec part problem.

Do you have the source for this statement? I've seen nothing but speculation myself, including from those that many follow.

Edited now that I've seen the follow up posts..... I know there were problems and provisions made. But I still haven't seen where the pumps were inspected for the cars that failed during the race to confirm the issue....

[saviour stivala]

‘’It seems that they have run out of fuel’’ Not only sounds like it, it also looks like it. But in actual fact they did not run out of fuel, because if they did we would have heard/read about the stewards not being able to extract the mandatory litre of after race fuel sample. As said by MV. Fuel was not getting to the engine, and as per Horner. The problem might be fuel lift pump, fuel pod or the E10 fuel itself (fuel temerature).

[etusch]

I hope they will sort it out soon. Honda pu looked very powerfull. Verstappen overtook leclerc while there was big gap when they enter the s/f straights.

[djones]

Good news: Its been confirmed both RBR issues were an FIA spec part problem.

Given no other team had issues, surely that is not a good thing as it points to an implementation problem?

[Bill]

honda and merc have using Bosch fuel why didnt fia go with Italian companies are known for their garbage reliability

[Postmoe]

honda and merc have using Bosch fuel why didnt fia go with Italian companies are known for their garbage reliability

Italian garbage just made a 1-2, please relax.

[Bill]

italian cars have a reputation for poor reliability they cost Rbr 2&4 the glass is also half empty why should i relax the part is poor across entire grid not just isolated to RBr

[Juzh]

I would have a real hard time believing the resin in the lift pump would break down with 5% more ethanol content. Everything in the US is E10 since they banned MTBE as an oxygenator and the fuel issues people had early on were due to it cleaning gunk out of the tank, not plastics. If they switched to E85 that would be a different story.

Heating of the fuel could be an issue, especially depending on packaging.

Vibrations inherent to the Honda could also cause the fuel lines / pumps / etc to go into resonance. This is far fetched but you can observe this with side draft carburetor engines. If you are brave, stand next to the engine on the dyno and you won’t be able to grab the float bowl. The carburetor bowl will resonate at such frequency at certain bad harmonics that the fuel foams. The lift pump pressure is probably nothing wild. I forget what the injector pressure has to be. I recently learned it’s 5000psi in DTM. I would have to think about this a little harder before I put any stock as an actual failure mode.

I am not shocked to learn teams in general struggled some with the switch, especially if they, like Honda, are using a hybrid HCCI / TJI combustion concept. I believe Honda only made this combustion concept work reliably by having a fuel developed especially for it. Otherwise it was inconsistent and more a happy accident than anything going by Wazari’s posts.

It is interesting that the RBR cars complained of decreasing power prior.
If fuel was falling off, then the engine would be derating itself, but this absolutely would have showed up along pit wall along with fuel pressure (I have no doubt that is sent to pit wall as well) and I believe would have resulted in a grenaded IC much more quickly.

Gasly’s failure was sudden, so that looks to be an entirely different issue and if that is the cam driven injector pump, that is a Honda part / design (which goes back to my one hypothesis about resonance) as that is directly bolted to the engine and not soft mounted like fuel lines should be.

This is bullshit

Elaborate, please. Tell me why it is and offer up a sound explanation backing it up.

According to The Race, they basically ran out of gas due to miscalculation of the heat of the fuel at low fuel levels because they didn’t do any race simulations down to that level. I don’t know if that is true or not, but it is a theory.

Why would you ever even consider such an outrageous theory? Running out of fuel after a lengthy SC period and verstappen stopping a whole 3 laps before the end would mean red bull are bunch of morons incapable of using a calculator. Sorry, but whoever proposed they ran out of fuel wasn't thinking straight and anyone who believed it also didn't put one thought into it. Sometimes when people are full of BS you just have to call it out, sorry.

[mclaren_mircea]

Good news. not official but almost confirmed. Adam Cooper and motorsport.com ar a decent source. Maybe the team will try to hide the problems for the competition. We dont know what the real truth is.

@LappedCars
| According to http://Motorsport.com, none of the standard supplied pumps across the two Red Bull cars were the cause of the retirements, and therefore the issue must lie elsewhere. #F1