Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[Badger]

For a different formula.

Where a majority of the power unit is very similar. As mentioned previously. Koji Watanabe specifically pointed out the vibrations produced by the power unit are almost identical to those produced in the last engine and they were not an issue with Red Bull at all. Integration between both entity's is key here, amateur to imply otherwise.

What is this narrative Honda needs help to succeed? It's beyond short sighted and there are valid explanations that have hindered them, but it seems the drama avenue is preferred over actual technical analysis.

- 2015: Joined earlier than desired, had been totally out of F1, needed to rebuild, no existing engineers from other teams were employed to assist in engine design (as is the case with Audi and RBPT and with a similar ICE and reduced complexity). Admitted underestimating PU complexity.
- 2016: Engine greatly improved, but hamstrung by restrictive token system preventing desired redesign and fast updates. Band-aid fixes like the raised intake plenum for a larger turbo were necessary.
- 2017: Token system dropped. New engine architecture introduced, still learning/researching pre-chamber capabilities and split turbo, physical size restricted by team, very pre-mature MGU-H design.
- 2018: Large step forward with Toro Rosso, Honda Jet staff brought in for MGU-H. Surpasses Renault
- 2019-2020: Continual steps forward, power unit is competitive and winning races. Surpasses Ferrari in 2019 (I'm ignoring the dodgy Ferrari engine for the first half of the season).
- 2021-2025: New PU architecture, which proceeded to be class of the field for 5 years, surpassing all rivals in most measurable aspects. Reliability, deployment, energy harvesting, driveability, power.

- 2026: Returned and began work 12 months later than competition with reduced staff. Avenues where Honda had great advantage on the ICE were completely removed by new regs. Reduced compression ratio, removal of MGU-H, removal of in cylinder pressure sensors during race weekend operations. All which completely stripped Honda's combustion technique from the previous engine. Forced to start again, most previous learnings nullified. New engine is down on output, matched with a very premature chassis while also learning how to integrate with a completely new team. Engine team is back to full strength early in the season.

By the sounds, the second specification has promise and they will only improve from here. They have only ever improved, regardless of where they started and end up surpassing rivals, so their development speed is impressive. If anything, it should give confidence for the future of what they can clearly do and have demonstrated. It is just disappointing uninformed management decisions cause them to flip flop in and out of F1, causing most of these issues. Going forward though with HRC now in charge as a separate entity to the Honda Global board room, that behaviour should halt entirely.

tl;dr: They have always started while facing adversity, but always recover and do so quickly. Literally zero basis for this "can't do it on their own" narrative.

Excuses.

- Joining when you are not ready is on you, no one forced Honda to return. When you take on a partnership and say you can deliver on time it's up to you to fulfill that obligation.
- Joining late does not account for the 6 years it took to catch up or the absolutely enormous power deficits they started with in 2015 and 2026. Having a 10%+ HP deficit in modern F1 is crazy, especially for a global manufacturer with Honda's pedigree.
- There are other teams who had more catching up to do than Honda. RBPT needed to build a factory and assemble an entire team from nothing + they had no previous IP or automotive technology to rely on. Audi also built their team from scratch with no previous IP. Honda already had a world class factory, they had personnel within the company with huge F1 experience, and they had genuinely competitive IP to draw from. They had all the pre-requisites to deliver something at least decent and they came up with a total dud. The contrast between the expectations and the reality of what they delivered speaks volumes here.

[Bill]

For a different formula.

Where a majority of the power unit is very similar. As mentioned previously. Koji Watanabe specifically pointed out the vibrations produced by the power unit are almost identical to those produced in the last engine and they were not an issue with Red Bull at all. Integration between both entity's is key here, amateur to imply otherwise.

What is this narrative Honda needs help to succeed? It's beyond short sighted and there are valid explanations that have hindered them, but it seems the drama avenue is preferred over actual technical analysis.

- 2015: Joined earlier than desired, had been totally out of F1, needed to rebuild, no existing engineers from other teams were employed to assist in engine design (as is the case with Audi and RBPT and with a similar ICE and reduced complexity). Admitted underestimating PU complexity.
- 2016: Engine greatly improved, but hamstrung by restrictive token system preventing desired redesign and fast updates. Band-aid fixes like the raised intake plenum for a larger turbo were necessary.
- 2017: Token system dropped. New engine architecture introduced, still learning/researching pre-chamber capabilities and split turbo, physical size restricted by team, very pre-mature MGU-H design.
- 2018: Large step forward with Toro Rosso, Honda Jet staff brought in for MGU-H. Surpasses Renault
- 2019-2020: Continual steps forward, power unit is competitive and winning races. Surpasses Ferrari in 2019 (I'm ignoring the dodgy Ferrari engine for the first half of the season).
- 2021-2025: New PU architecture, which proceeded to be class of the field for 5 years, surpassing all rivals in most measurable aspects. Reliability, deployment, energy harvesting, driveability, power.

- 2026: Returned and began work 12 months later than competition with reduced staff. Avenues where Honda had great advantage on the ICE were completely removed by new regs. Reduced compression ratio, removal of MGU-H, removal of in cylinder pressure sensors during race weekend operations. All which completely stripped Honda's combustion technique from the previous engine. Forced to start again, most previous learnings nullified. New engine is down on output, matched with a very premature chassis while also learning how to integrate with a completely new team. Engine team is back to full strength early in the season.

By the sounds, the second specification has promise and they will only improve from here. They have only ever improved, regardless of where they started and end up surpassing rivals, so their development speed is impressive. If anything, it should give confidence for the future of what they can clearly do and have demonstrated. It is just disappointing uninformed management decisions cause them to flip flop in and out of F1, causing most of these issues. Going forward though with HRC now in charge as a separate entity to the Honda Global board room, that behaviour should halt entirely.

tl;dr: They have always started while facing adversity, but always recover and do so quickly. Literally zero basis for this "can't do it on their own" narrative.

Excuses.

- Joining when you are not ready is on you, no one forced Honda to return. When you take on a partnership and say you can deliver on time it's up to you to fulfill that obligation.
- Joining late does not account for the 6 years it took to catch up or the absolutely enormous power deficits they started with in 2015 and 2026. Having a 10%+ HP deficit in modern F1 is crazy, especially for a global manufacturer with Honda's pedigree.
- There are other teams who had more catching up to do than Honda. RBPT needed to build a factory and assemble an entire team from nothing + they had no previous IP or automotive technology to rely on. Audi also built their team from scratch with no previous IP. Honda already had a world class factory, they had personnel within the company with huge F1 experience, and they had genuinely competitive IP to draw from. They had all the pre-requisites to deliver something at least decent and they came up with a total dud. The contrast between the expectations and the reality of what they delivered speaks volumes here.

honda yes did catch up their Mercedes and overtook them and won the world champion .without them you would had been staring at Mercedes 10 year dominance. Mercedes has a 5 years head start in development having started in 2007 and had the benefit of years of running kers as exprience.honda will have and upgrade and will have power increase and weight reduction. Aston will have new gearbox which help with drivability and assist with electric recovery.so total close 1 second in laptime.

[diffuser]

Excuses.

- Joining when you are not ready is on you, no one forced Honda to return. When you take on a partnership and say you can deliver on time it's up to you to fulfill that obligation.

Disagree. It's on AMR F1 to make sure they get what they want out of Honda. Honda is simply there to educate its engineers and serve as a proving ground for them. I'm not certain Honda cares how bad they look at the start of the project, as long as they end up being, arguably, the best at some point.

You could argue that Honda should have enough pride to come into the new regulations prepared, but that's not Honda's primary goal. It's AMR F1's responsibility to ensure Honda is ready. Since AMR F1 didn't come prepared themselves, it's hard for them to point fingers. In fact a strong argument could be made that AMR F1's lack of preparedness further hindered Honda. A prepared AMR F1 could have decreased Honda's weakness.

[Badger]

Excuses.

- Joining when you are not ready is on you, no one forced Honda to return. When you take on a partnership and say you can deliver on time it's up to you to fulfill that obligation.

Disagree. It's on AMR F1 to make sure they get what they want out of Honda. Honda is simply there to educate its engineers and serve as a proving ground for them. I'm not certain Honda cares how bad they look at the start of the project, as long as they end up being, arguably, the best at some point.

You could argue that Honda should have enough pride to come into the new regulations prepared, but that's not Honda's primary goal. It's AMR F1's responsibility to ensure Honda is ready. Since AMR F1 didn't come prepared themselves, it's hard for them to point fingers. In fact a strong argument could be made that AMR F1's lack of preparedness further hindered Honda. A prepared AMR F1 could have decreased Honda's weakness.

This Honda "training ground" tripe needs to stop. No team with the ambition of McLaren or AMR would ever sacrifice its own future on a Honda trainee program. They went in with the expectation that Honda could produce a competitive engine in short order (if not immediately in the case of 2026), and that was 100% the ambition that Honda communicated to them otherwise they would never have signed a partnership. The fact that Honda in both cases failed to deliver something competitive is what has necessitated all these weird theories and excuses about what their purpose in F1 really is. The reality is that Honda underestimated the challenge and overpromised in terms of what they could deliver, and that is 100% on them. If you say you are going to do something do it, don't come with 50 different excuses including "we started late" and "we never even intended to be good right away, we are just training". It's all cope

Let's be very clear, there are far more cost-effective and reputation-sparing ways of educating young engineers than having an F1 program full of rookies. It is also not very educational to be in a dysfunctional working group without adequate leadership and direction. You'd learn far quicker how to be a successful engineer under the tutelage of a James Allison or Ben Hodgkinson. Honda by comparison looks like a hen house.

[diffuser]

Excuses.

- Joining when you are not ready is on you, no one forced Honda to return. When you take on a partnership and say you can deliver on time it's up to you to fulfill that obligation.

Disagree. It's on AMR F1 to make sure they get what they want out of Honda. Honda is simply there to educate its engineers and serve as a proving ground for them. I'm not certain Honda cares how bad they look at the start of the project, as long as they end up being, arguably, the best at some point.

You could argue that Honda should have enough pride to come into the new regulations prepared, but that's not Honda's primary goal. It's AMR F1's responsibility to ensure Honda is ready. Since AMR F1 didn't come prepared themselves, it's hard for them to point fingers. In fact a strong argument could be made that AMR F1's lack of preparedness further hindered Honda. A prepared AMR F1 could have decreased Honda's weakness.

This Honda "training ground" tripe needs to stop. No team with the ambition of McLaren or AMR would ever sacrifice its own future on a Honda trainee program. They went in with the expectation that Honda could produce a competitive engine in short order (if not immediately in the case of 2026), and that was 100% the ambition that Honda communicated to them otherwise they would never have signed a partnership. The fact that Honda in both cases failed to deliver something competitive is what has necessitated all these weird theories and excuses about what their purpose in F1 really is. The reality is that Honda underestimated the challenge and overpromised in terms of what they could deliver, and that is 100% on them. If you say you are going to do something do it, don't come with 50 different excuses including "we started late" and "we never even intended to be good right away, we are just training". It's all cope

Let's be very clear, there are far more cost-effective and reputation-sparing ways of educating young engineers than having an F1 program full of rookies. It is also not very educational to be in a dysfunctional working group without adequate leadership and direction. You'd learn far quicker how to be a successful engineer under the tutelage of a James Allison or Ben Hodgkinson. Honda by comparison looks like a hen house.

I highly doubt James Allison or Ben Hodgkinson could teach Honda R&D anything about ICEs.

I don't disagree with you, you'd expect that Honda would be a "Self Starter". They haven't been, so you either keep a tight leash on them or you get another partner. AMR F1 KNEW that that Honda had been a slow starter in the past. Nobody did anything at AMR F1 till Nov 2025. They were waiting for Newey to arrive and check ? Once they checked and learned there was a disaster pending, they turned up the screws but it takes a long time to react in the PU space.

[hollus]

They went in with the expectation that Honda could produce a competitive engine in short order (if not immediately in the case of 2026), and that was 100% the ambition that Honda communicated to them otherwise they would never have signed a partnership…

One could just as easily say the Honda would have expected Aston to provide a competitive chassis and aero package at the start if the season…

[Badger]

This Honda "training ground" tripe needs to stop. No team with the ambition of McLaren or AMR would ever sacrifice its own future on a Honda trainee program. They went in with the expectation that Honda could produce a competitive engine in short order (if not immediately in the case of 2026), and that was 100% the ambition that Honda communicated to them otherwise they would never have signed a partnership. The fact that Honda in both cases failed to deliver something competitive is what has necessitated all these weird theories and excuses about what their purpose in F1 really is. The reality is that Honda underestimated the challenge and overpromised in terms of what they could deliver, and that is 100% on them. If you say you are going to do something do it, don't come with 50 different excuses including "we started late" and "we never even intended to be good right away, we are just training". It's all cope

Let's be very clear, there are far more cost-effective and reputation-sparing ways of educating young engineers than having an F1 program full of rookies. It is also not very educational to be in a dysfunctional working group without adequate leadership and direction. You'd learn far quicker how to be a successful engineer under the tutelage of a James Allison or Ben Hodgkinson. Honda by comparison looks like a hen house.

I highly doubt James Allison or Ben Hodgkinson could teach Honda R&D anything about ICEs.

I don't disagree with you, you'd expect that Honda would be a "Self Starter". They're haven't been, so you either keep a tight leash on them or you get another partner. AMR F1 NEW that that Honda had been a slow starter in the past. Nobody did anything at AMR F1 till Nov 2025. They were waiting for Newey to arrive and check ? Once they checked and learned there was a disaster pending, they turned up the screws but it takes a long time to react in the PU space.

The results speak for themselves. And I don't mean those two personally teaching people obviously, I used their names as proxies for the organisations they lead. I think a young engineer would have learned more about good engine development working for HPP or RBPT in the last 3 years or so over Honda.

They went in with the expectation that Honda could produce a competitive engine in short order (if not immediately in the case of 2026), and that was 100% the ambition that Honda communicated to them otherwise they would never have signed a partnership…

One could just as easily say the Honda would have expected Aston to provide a competitive chassis and aero package at the start if the season…

Sure, but there's levels to uncompetitiveness. The Aston chassis is bad, but not uniquely bad. They are in the ballpark with the likes of Williams and Haas, and well ahead of Cadillac. The engine is uniquely bad. We are talking a power deficit estimated to be over 10% to the leading ICE, and probably in excess of 5% to the second worst ICE. The engine is basically as uncompetitive as Cadillac's chassis, the difference being Cadillac is a newcomer and Honda won the last 3 races of 2025.

[Bill]

Excuses.

- Joining when you are not ready is on you, no one forced Honda to return. When you take on a partnership and say you can deliver on time it's up to you to fulfill that obligation.

Disagree. It's on AMR F1 to make sure they get what they want out of Honda. Honda is simply there to educate its engineers and serve as a proving ground for them. I'm not certain Honda cares how bad they look at the start of the project, as long as they end up being, arguably, the best at some point.

You could argue that Honda should have enough pride to come into the new regulations prepared, but that's not Honda's primary goal. It's AMR F1's responsibility to ensure Honda is ready. Since AMR F1 didn't come prepared themselves, it's hard for them to point fingers. In fact a strong argument could be made that AMR F1's lack of preparedness further hindered Honda. A prepared AMR F1 could have decreased Honda's weakness.

This Honda "training ground" tripe needs to stop. No team with the ambition of McLaren or AMR would ever sacrifice its own future on a Honda trainee program. They went in with the expectation that Honda could produce a competitive engine in short order (if not immediately in the case of 2026), and that was 100% the ambition that Honda communicated to them otherwise they would never have signed a partnership. The fact that Honda in both cases failed to deliver something competitive is what has necessitated all these weird theories and excuses about what their purpose in F1 really is. The reality is that Honda underestimated the challenge and overpromised in terms of what they could deliver, and that is 100% on them. If you say you are going to do something do it, don't come with 50 different excuses including "we started late" and "we never even intended to be good right away, we are just training". It's all cope

Let's be very clear, there are far more cost-effective and reputation-sparing ways of educating young engineers than having an F1 program full of rookies. It is also not very educational to be in a dysfunctional working group without adequate leadership and direction. You'd learn far quicker how to be a successful engineer under the tutelage of a James Allison or Ben Hodgkinson. Honda by comparison looks like a hen house.

These is just argument for the sake of argument honda has won multiple championship in f1 and across multiple motorsport discipline and have laid a plan on how they recover and expert mid 2027 to be among the best . aston before upgrades had the worst car on the grid so what would a good pu have done for them.they is a general honda f1 topic thread so if yo want to post honda bs you could do that their here you post only technical matters so keep it shut.

[Tommy Cookers]

scratch this ....

[Tommy Cookers]

iirc and btw ....

in 1956 Aston Martin promised to make a (front-engined) F1 car if Roy Salvadori agreed to drive it ....
but they got so involved with winning the WSC they had no F1 car in 1958

so RS drove in 1958 the Cooper-Climax (an F2 car so very undersized enginewise for F1) finishing 4th in the WDC
the engine stretch to 2.2 litres lacked counterbalance and vibrated so much drivers at Le Mans had on-track comfort stops

when new fullsize engines arrived in 1959 the Cooper won WDC/WCC in 1959 and 1960 (Brabham on promotion) ....
RS having left Cooper to drive the '1956' Aston in 1959 (actually winning a short non-WDC race at Snetterton)
the Aston was big and heavy with a dud engine (a 4 main bearing version that couldn't last a GP race)

another dud 'world beater' then was the Scarab (with Mercedes-Benz desmodromics)
now 50 years late we know a manufacturing error was the cause of its 50 bhp shortfall

btw 2 - the Cooper ate front tyres so JB drove tail-out to help them (said he at his first big win - Aintree GP 1959)

[mzso]

tl;dr: They have always started while facing adversity, but always recover and do so quickly. Literally zero basis for this "can't do it on their own" narrative.

It's not adversity if you create the issues yourself. Particularly for this year, with the lack of respect, effort put into the task. You're not supposed to be putting back the team together when the PU is already deployed and racing.

For 2015 gross overconfidence seems to have been a huge factor.

False. It doesn't matter where the issues or roadblocks stem from. That doesn't define adversity.
2015 was exactly what I said it was. A total underestimation of the PU complexity, which they publicly admitted to and took full responsibility for. 2026 you can see even back in 2023 they were saying they will need to rebuild their entire infrastructure after leaving and this would take time. Increasing the strength of your PU team during the season is a negative how? Because it wasn't timely enough? We all knew this. We had grossly high expectations for this collaboration considering how unprepared they were and this feeds all the negative chatter into something bigger.

If we are really honest and you use this forum to look for someone to blame, look at Aston Martin who, regardless of time constraints, somehow managed to build a chassis that is not just slow, but responsible for 4 seconds of a 5 second lap time deficit. Borderline unheard of. My entire point is this narrative "Honda can't do it on their own" is braindead DTS slop. The noises from both camps after their first updates are good.

Wow, that's Ispano levels of bias.
This year is far more similar to 2015 than you claim, but even worse. They fully ignored the magnitude of the task, didn't bother to put everyone necessary back on the project, as soon as the decision was mad. And we got what we got.
(And no, adversity implies and external hindrance. Internally it's failing.)

And then you pile on AM, where new key people had far less time and not because of themselves, but gardening leaves, waiting for a wind tunnel that was just getting ready, and such. Also it's no surprise that they didn't bother to fix anything gradually seeing the amount of issues and the fact that even if they did the power gap would be huge.

[mzso]

Disagree. It's on AMR F1 to make sure they get what they want out of Honda. Honda is simply there to educate its engineers and serve as a proving ground for them. I'm not certain Honda cares how bad they look at the start of the project, as long as they end up being, arguably, the best at some point.

You could argue that Honda should have enough pride to come into the new regulations prepared, but that's not Honda's primary goal. It's AMR F1's responsibility to ensure Honda is ready. Since AMR F1 didn't come prepared themselves, it's hard for them to point fingers. In fact a strong argument could be made that AMR F1's lack of preparedness further hindered Honda. A prepared AMR F1 could have decreased Honda's weakness.

Wow. This is the biggest nonsense I have read in a while. A PU manufacturers primary duty is to provide a competitive PU. There's no doubt about that. That "Honda doesn't want to be good, just to train people" narrative was born in on this forum.

[diffuser]

Disagree. It's on AMR F1 to make sure they get what they want out of Honda. Honda is simply there to educate its engineers and serve as a proving ground for them. I'm not certain Honda cares how bad they look at the start of the project, as long as they end up being, arguably, the best at some point.

You could argue that Honda should have enough pride to come into the new regulations prepared, but that's not Honda's primary goal. It's AMR F1's responsibility to ensure Honda is ready. Since AMR F1 didn't come prepared themselves, it's hard for them to point fingers. In fact a strong argument could be made that AMR F1's lack of preparedness further hindered Honda. A prepared AMR F1 could have decreased Honda's weakness.

Wow. This is the biggest nonsense I have read in a while. A PU manufacturers primary duty is to provide a competitive PU. There's no doubt about that. That "Honda doesn't want to be good, just to train people" narrative was born in on this forum.

Like I said "I'm not certain Honda cares how bad they look at the start of the project, as long as they end up being, arguably, the best at some point." There is a history there to support that.

[diffuser]

These is just argument for the sake of argument honda has won multiple championship in f1 and across multiple motorsport discipline and have laid a plan on how they recover and expert mid 2027 to be among the best . aston before upgrades had the worst car on the grid so what would a good pu have done for them.they is a general honda f1 topic thread so if yo want to post honda bs you could do that their here you post only technical matters so keep it shut.

That's the argument for going with Honda as a PU Manufacture. The trick is you need to be on top of them to balance that out with they're likely gonna be late to the party.

[GhostF1]

It's not adversity if you create the issues yourself. Particularly for this year, with the lack of respect, effort put into the task. You're not supposed to be putting back the team together when the PU is already deployed and racing.

For 2015 gross overconfidence seems to have been a huge factor.

False. It doesn't matter where the issues or roadblocks stem from. That doesn't define adversity.
2015 was exactly what I said it was. A total underestimation of the PU complexity, which they publicly admitted to and took full responsibility for. 2026 you can see even back in 2023 they were saying they will need to rebuild their entire infrastructure after leaving and this would take time. Increasing the strength of your PU team during the season is a negative how? Because it wasn't timely enough? We all knew this. We had grossly high expectations for this collaboration considering how unprepared they were and this feeds all the negative chatter into something bigger.

If we are really honest and you use this forum to look for someone to blame, look at Aston Martin who, regardless of time constraints, somehow managed to build a chassis that is not just slow, but responsible for 4 seconds of a 5 second lap time deficit. Borderline unheard of. My entire point is this narrative "Honda can't do it on their own" is braindead DTS slop. The noises from both camps after their first updates are good.

Wow, that's Ispano levels of bias.
This year is far more similar to 2015 than you claim, but even worse. They fully ignored the magnitude of the task, didn't bother to put everyone necessary back on the project, as soon as the decision was mad. And we got what we got.
(And no, adversity implies and external hindrance. Internally it's failing.)

And then you pile on AM, where new key people had far less time and not because of themselves, but gardening leaves, waiting for a wind tunnel that was just getting ready, and such. Also it's no surprise that they didn't bother to fix anything gradually seeing the amount of issues and the fact that even if they did the power gap would be huge.

Lmao how is it bias??
You yourself are literally minimising every single aspect of this project at any chance you get to feed into some rage bait delusion while also completely ignoring all accomplishments as well. What I'm trying to do is wade through you're outrage and provide a balanced context..

The reality is there are clear explanations for why they are where they are, whether you want to personally acknowledge them or not. Yes it is frustrating Honda flip-flop in and out of F1 and basically cause grievances for themselves but it isn't all surprises where none of this was communicated. They announced a return with Aston, acknowledged they will need to rebuild the team and are a year or two behind development, so are expecting a slow start. That is what we have, I agree a touch worse than expected but this seems more a collaboratively poor effect rather than just Honda. This narrative of ignoring their honest communications over the last 3 years and then still getting angry they are behind is just demonstrating a fundamentally poor understanding about how F1 works.
It is also nowhere near 2015 levels of unpreparedness! The engine architecture, facilities and path forward all completely known and set and within 6 months we already have an engine update they are happy with and will likely halve the deficit and then only improve from there. They have no concerns over a way forward and have confidence. All which they lacked in 2015.

I didn't pile on AM, it is literally what they have done. They are not a new team, they are well financed and backed, have not stopped or disbanded or sold facilities or have an entirely new workforce. Yes true, they have some new key people and had some gardening leave to deal with which will obviously create issues and a slow mid-tier start, but they didn't just have a poor car off the bat that was premature, they started with one of the worst cars ever produced in Formula 1.
A 5+ second gap, where 4 seconds of that was down to the chassis alone is atrocious, no matter which way you spin it. They could have had the Merc rocket PU in the back and still be behind Cadillac with that deficit.
So you providing excuses for AM and saying it's ok, but in the same breath rubbishing Honda, who were open about their position from the start and have clear reasons for why they are where they are (an engine 4-8% down)... I really don't know what else to say to someone in a productive context who holds a weird dual stance like that.