Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[Soichiro]

Lack of success.

I don't let my lack of success reflect on what I think of some F1 team.

Yes, maybe you have difficulty understanding me.
Honda withdrew from F1 in the 90's during the Williams "era". The lack of success did not fit their business model.
BAR Honda Had no success in F1, they withdrew on very short notice.
I can see that happening again.

Edit: I deleted the remark

Honda actually withdrew from F1 in 1991. After major success in F1. As far as I remember in 1992 they did supply the engines but were not developing it anymore. It was not a Williams era either, they begun winning with Williams but achieved the most with McLaren (they were in F1 for about a decade). With BAR they came pretty close in 2004? and it was not BAR in 2008 when they withdrew from F1 after 10 years in F1 (recession). Should I conclude that they stay for a decade and then leave?

Edit 2: Regarding your comment about Honda engine being "a dud". It still lacks power in comparison to Merc and Ferarri 2016 but this race was messed by McLaren mostly with wrong tyre strategy. Alonso on SS was slower than Button on S and than they fitted Button with SS - he did 5-6 laps got passed the Force India and than started to loose the time - quite substantially.

[Chene_Mostert]

I don't let my lack of success reflect on what I think of some F1 team.

Yes, maybe you have difficulty understanding me.
Honda withdrew from F1 in the 90's during the Williams "era". The lack of success did not fit their business model.
BAR Honda Had no success in F1, they withdrew on very short notice.
I can see that happening again.

You have no clue, do you?

Honda actually withdrew from F1 in 1991. After major success in F1. As far as I remember in 1992 they did supply the engines but were not developing it anymore. It was not a Williams era either, they begun winning with Williams but achieved the most with McLaren (they were in F1 for about a decade). With BAR they came pretty close in 2004? and it was not BAR in 2008 when they withdrew from F1 after 10 years in F1 (recession). Should I conclude that they stay for a decade and then leave?

No, It was a Williams era, Williams Renault to be exact, they dethroned McLaren Honda. Honda then decided to quit.
The engines supplied was Mugen development of Honda that was supplied to Footwork arrows team.
After Honda, McLaren used Ford, before Peugeot disaster. Current Honda situation is the same as McLaren Peugeot.

[Soichiro]

A OK, I understood it wrong, that you were referring to Williams Honda. Sorry.

[GoranF1]

moving Compressor(bigger one) from V to rear of engine?

That could be the rumored major upgrade by round 11

And with that move I would guess a new MGU-H and Turbine too and improvements to ERS cooling.

I have to ask,is that an opinion or do you have some info on that?

[hemichromis]

I've heard the same rumor, not sure if it's true and I struggle to believe it.

[ollandos]

i think this criticize for honda from media and fans is bum rap.....with to late start of project 1 year less race data and after only 1 year today i saw big big step....excellent reliability all weekend coming from worst situation of all suppliers with very good performance all days very close to the others maybe mclaren now is closer than ever to mercedes .....lets wait little more
any news aboyt upgrade for bahrain from honda side?

[Andres125sx]

Lack of success.

I don't let my lack of success reflect on what I think of some F1 team.

Yes, maybe you have difficulty understanding me.
Honda withdrew from F1 in the 90's during the Williams "era". The lack of success did not fit their business model.
BAR Honda Had no success in F1, they withdrew on very short notice.
I can see that happening again.

I can´t, not before they clean their company name and restore it to what it had always been


Quitting now would extend the idea Honda can´t build a proper F1 engine. Do you really think a japaneese company will accept this?

[Andres125sx]

Also, I think yesterday perfomance was limited. I don´t think they would risk running the PU at 100% with no previous experience in a complete race with this almost new PU.


If I´d be Honda, I first would assure that reliability is ok. It is (if they don´t find anything weird in their post-race inspection) so now for next race they can push the PU a little bit more. Step by step.

Some people look like they expected Honda would run their PU at 100% from first race and they should have fought for the podium, but reality is when you do mayor changes, you must first test if everything is working as expected, specially with this complicated PUs.

[taperoo2k]

Looks like the "old boys club" engine is also a dud.
Honda board will withdraw from F1 at the end of the season. ATM their F1 project is a liability to the brand and a massive financial burden.

They won't withdraw from F1 anytime soon. It's too early in the project to do so as that would cause a lot
of damage to the Honda brand more so than not winning in F1.
Plus they are using F1 as a platform to train their younger engineers and develop hybrid systems they can use as a starting point for it's road cars. As it is Honda have yet to use all of it's tokens for this season and 2017 is pretty open on the development front. If those rumoured upgrades appear by race 11 and they work, then watch for the press to start praising Honda to the hilt, before slipping back into "they are way behind Mercedes and Ferrari".

[drunkf1fan]

Also, I think yesterday perfomance was limited. I don´t think they would risk running the PU at 100% with no previous experience in a complete race with this almost new PU.


If I´d be Honda, I first would assure that reliability is ok. It is (if they don´t find anything weird in their post-race inspection) so now for next race they can push the PU a little bit more. Step by step.

Some people look like they expected Honda would run their PU at 100% from first race and they should have fought for the podium, but reality is when you do mayor changes, you must first test if everything is working as expected, specially with this complicated PUs.

Honda spent 18 tokens, Merc 19, Ferrari what, 23 or something and Renault effectively 18 I believe as they spent 7 this year and 11 at the end of last year that were basically unused but with a view to this years engine.

They all have upgrades, the Merc engine was what, 2.5 seconds faster compared to last year, with about the same speed gain Mclaren had(comparing Abu dhabi 2015 to Australia 2016). There is nothing to suggest the Honda engine is newer or has more changes than the other engines, but we should make excuses for Honda and suggest they didn't run flat out because their engine was new while the others did? There is nothing to indicate Honda made any more significant or radical updates to their engine than any other team did, in fact there is actual evidence that other teams spent more tokens.

Mclaren also ran plenty of laps in testing, to suggest this is their first chance to see if everything is working as expected is not very accurate and the complicated nature of the engines is irrelevant as their engine is no more complicated than their competitors.

There is also the fact that during last year they ran detuned, started killing engine after engine anyway and pretty much stated that running detuned was worthless because if you aren't running at 100% you aren't learning the real problems with the engine. Along the lines of, run at 80%, something breaks, you fix it, run at 90% and something else breaks, fix it, rinse/repeat. If they just ran 100% then maybe 5 things break straight away and you can get to work fixing them all. The other way you end up only finding the 5th thing months down the line when you finally run full out. Honda seemed to finally figure this out midway through last season having wasted months. So in reality it's unlikely that they were running detuned or at significantly lower power than they have available because they learnt it's a complete waste of time to do so. The quicker something breaks, the quicker they can fix it. Running slow hoping something doesn't break doesn't get you to winning races quicker, finding everything that breaks as soon as possible does.

[tuj]

Really Honda should be quite embarrassed and ashamed. They had all of 2014 to learn from Mercedes what they were doing, or at least try. Then they had all of last year to get their power-plant up to its 100% potential, something I don't think they ever actually did last year.

This is a case of Japanese culture and conservatism. No one wants to be the head that rolls, therefore they take no risks, and earn no reward. Just MHO.

[tuj]

Really Honda should be quite embarrassed and ashamed. They had all of 2014 to learn from Mercedes what they were doing, or at least try. Then they had all of last year to get their power-plant up to its 100% potential, something I don't think they ever actually did last year.

This is a case of Japanese culture and conservatism. No one wants to be the head that rolls, therefore they take no risks, and earn no reward. Just MHO.

[taperoo2k]

Really Honda should be quite embarrassed and ashamed. They had all of 2014 to learn from Mercedes what they were doing, or at least try. Then they had all of last year to get their power-plant up to its 100% potential, something I don't think they ever actually did last year.

Honda went in a different design direction to Mercedes rightly or wrongly, it would have been easier to emulate Mercedes (you can only copy if you have the complete schematics as to what Mercedes has done, there's more to it than the split turbo design alone). Mercedes will have kept a tight lid on what McLaren and ergo Honda learned about what it was doing. The first year was always going to be tough, these are not easy pieces of technology to get right as Renault discovered and is still playing catch up even now. All be it a bit further up the road than Honda and McLaren are.

This is a case of Japanese culture and conservatism. No one wants to be the head that rolls, therefore they take no risks, and earn no reward. Just MHO.

Maybe so, or it's pragmatism that might pay off in the end i.e. sticking with the design with long term objectives. We simply don't know where the Honda and McLaren partnership is going at this point. The token upgrades that are in the pipeline will likely shed light on how far Honda have progressed since last season. One race in and the doom has set in

[tuj]

Honda went in a different design direction to Mercedes rightly or wrongly, it would have been easier to emulate Mercedes (you can only copy if you have the complete schematics as to what Mercedes has done, there's more to it than the split turbo design alone).

The split turbo was an ingenious concept, something that SHOULD be copied! It is easily as big of an innovation as the DD-diffusor of Brawn GP, which was of course copied by the whole paddock. Or the f-duct. Or the exhaust-blown diffusor. Or the Double DRS.

Part of F1 is knowing when someone else has done something really clever. If you read the Mercedes thread, there is lots of speculation about the Mercedes combustion concept (most believe they really are running incredibly stratified / lean charges).

And as far as spying on Mercedes, do you REALLY believe that McLaren, the team that was fined $100M for "cheating" a while back, didn't put a borescope down into the engine? Ultrasound? Fuel consumption? Turbo design? Honda had access to all of these things. They probably even had a good idea of what kind of power they needed to make to be competitive too.

But instead Honda has gone with a very different concept, one that doesn't seem to be working. Arai was sacked, and I believe a bunch of others over last two-year's engine program. Yes, they ran much better at OZ but they also had a LOT of time to get ready. Not a single team did what Merc did this year in testing, which was run a virtual SEASON in terms of mileage.

[Andres125sx]

Honda spent 18 tokens, Merc 19, Ferrari what, 23 or something and Renault effectively 18 I believe as they spent 7 this year and 11 at the end of last year that were basically unused but with a view to this years engine

Tokens only indicate the parts you´ve modified, not how deep was that mod, so from the tokens you can´t know who modified his PU further, as none publish the details of their mods

There is nothing to suggest the Honda engine is newer or has more changes than the other engines

There is. Their PU didn´t work past season, as simple as that.

When your PU works, you only need to do minor changes, updates, some tweaking to improve your perfomance, but you have a working base wich does not need mayor changes

When your PU does not work (can´t harvest enough energy) you then need to do mayor changes, a complete modification of the components, layout, etc.

Mclaren also ran plenty of laps in testing, to suggest this is their first chance to see if everything is working as expected is not very accurate and the complicated nature of the engines is irrelevant as their engine is no more complicated than their competitors.

Correct, but their competitors started competing between each other at the same time, so even if they run their PU detuned in first stages, they all did it, so none of them looked as slow as Honda because they all were on a similar situation. Honda OTOH need to do some basic checks when the rest did that a long time ago, so now we see Honda very slow in comparison

Running slow hoping something doesn't break doesn't get you to winning races quicker, finding everything that breaks as soon as possible does.

Probably, but breaking apart one PU per GP and getting no mileage at all surely will not get you to winning races

Running slow allow you to get some mileage and to check correlation between your simulations, dyno tests, and real world, and this is basic nowadays with testing banned. If you break apart your PU you have no data to analyse.