FoxHound wrote:What's to say you need a token to replace a part that performs well, but is unreliable?
If that's the case, changes cannot be meted out under the reliability clause. That's not the situation here.
Honda started well behind, if we used your methodology universally at Honda, they would finish every race a lap or 2 behind... but finish the race they would.
The first part, that isn't what I'm saying. Honda are spending the same tokens either way.
They started the season with the original MGU-H, upgrading it to an unreliable mgu-h that may be faster costing lets say one token, then upgrading that for reliability reasons for free.... means they've spent one token for the season upgrading the mgu-h.
If they design a single mgu-h that is both faster AND reliable and they only design one mgu-h, then it would cost a single token as well, it's one token either way. The former however requires at least two production cycles which means you're taking longer to get to the actual final design you need.
Adding 'performance' parts that aren't reliable provides effectively no help at all. The mgu-h has sent the team backwards and it isn't guaranteed they can upgrade it for free in the future. If finding reliability requires a significant enough change then it's unlikely to get changed without costing tokens. No engineer anywhere purposefully designs something unreliable.
THe real issue is that Honda designed, manufactured and tested this mgu-h and clearly believed it would help out on track. This is the fundamental issue we've seen with Honda, they thought they were bringing a good engine and didn't, they think they are going to use a better mgu-h but it actually made things worse.
It's the same as aero where some teams manage to get good new aero, where design/testing away from the track translates to good on track performance. Other teams struggle and think they've made a good part but it doesn't work on track. Merc/Ferrari are managing to make good engines, test them believe they are fast/reliable then they get to the track and are fast and reliable. Honda believe they are making good parts then get to track testing and find out, well, they aren't. There is no reason to spend tokens on an upgrade that is anything other than what they believe will be an upgrade. Something faster but so unreliable you can't finish a race isn't an upgrade.