Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[PlatinumZealot]

EB states clearly what some of us have said for years- you can't build a competitive engine from Japan.

Well, he musnt know much about f1 history then! Honda seem to have managed pretty well before.

Well, I would say they can build a winning engine(PU), no doubt on that. Their problem is inovation. The Japanese are good in making things better, not so inovating them.

Sorry for OT.

A lot of Japanese would disagree with that one! I disagree as well. That statement is too sweeping. haha. I hope you reconsider.

[PlatinumZealot]

Lets put it plain and simple: suppliers share key information and are also part of the R&D cycle.
And... suppliers want you to suceed. It's their job and their only way of expanding.

Also, horizontal jumps are normal within those environments which has lots of implications.

There is no eurocentrism implied, as no other region in Europe is comparable too (in terms of F1)

EDIT: Honda has the handicap of building all this "F1 sillicon valley" around Sakura or choosing not to have it. Both options have consequences.

They could, eventually, create a strong subsidiary R&D center in the UK as the other teams to at least minimize disconnection.

You hit the nail on the head. It is not because Honda are incompetent, is because they are not in the right location with inhibits the reaction time, and they are far from the people with F1 experience etc. Nonetheless they have done an amazing job to come this far in their isolation! =D>

[Singabule]

Toyota F1 is a 22countries mess, no strong leadership. In japanese corporation or even kireitsu, they move in one direction usually from one leader. With outsource their technical to UK based company would only make things worsen, with dual leadership. It is in their blood, culture chance is not gonna happen. But what is the result we are talking about? Certainly in the past they always competitive on every sport or aspect. But because they consult, not outsource, it may takes longer. If regulation is stable enough, we will see their true competitiveness as in indy, motogp, and F1 in the past.

[GhostF1]

Funny how we have to look to Renault for some good insight on the situation with Honda from pre-season.
It's honestly how we should be acting to the current scenario. Not pandering to the media explosions.

RENAULT NOT FEELING SAFE FROM HONDA THREAT
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/rena ... at-883235/

[mclaren111]

That seems a little (actually quite a lot) Euro-centric and a huge underestimation of other teams/countries capabilities. There's more than enough brilliant people in Japan, actually nearly everywhere nowadays, that would do the trick provided they have enough funding and time. Thinking that only here the task would be achieved is quite ridiculous IMHO.

Hmm.. That's so not what EB is saying;

There's a reason Mercedes builds their car and engines in Brackley. F1 is centered in England. That's where the knowledge (engineers & suppliers) are mainly located. This was one of the reasons that Toyota was destined to fail from the get-go- Ross Brawn already pointed this out at the time.

And that's what EB is saying: Euro suppliers might be more expensive but they're way quicker (through their experience). To become a winning team everything needs to be optimised to the max. As EB says it's all heavily time critical. And with the time lost with suppliers (and travelling back and forth from Sakura) this setup is far from optimal.

I was in Supply Chain Management for 25 years and believe me with proper planning this will / should not be an
issue !!

[Chicane]

Zak Brown:- "I don't know how many races we've got there but I would be pleasantly surprised if we made it out of Q1 in Melbourne," he added. "Getting out of Q1 [would be a good result], and seeing the checkered flag. We've got speed and reliability issues so we want to see more speed and we want to see more reliability. So certainly seeing the finish of the race, given that we were only able to put together a dozen laps at any one time, would be great progress. So that would be very encouraging to see that we get our cars to the end of the weekend."

http://www.racer.com/f1/item/139032-it- ... -fix-brown

[ziggy]

Well, he musnt know much about f1 history then! Honda seem to have managed pretty well before.

Well, I would say they can build a winning engine(PU), no doubt on that. Their problem is inovation. The Japanese are good in making things better, not so inovating them.

Sorry for OT.

A lot of Japanese would disagree with that one! I disagree as well. That statement is too sweeping. haha. I hope you reconsider.

I could, but I would come to the same conclusion. I can give you numerous examples, starting with the transistor. Like many others pointed it out, honda wants to do everything on their own. Personally I would say it's the right thing to do, so you can have all knowledge under 1 roof. But not in F1

Ex. you can buy ready developed and tested pistons and have them in few days, or you can spend weeks, months or even years perfecting them. However, there's no doubt Honda can develop and produce equal or better pistons than the others, the time needed for R&D will kill the project.

Same goes, when you come into some problems. You have to react fast. And it's a huge difference if your supplyer has the solution ready to sell or you have to spend huge ammounts of time for R&D. There are only a handfull of people capable to cope with a such coplex PU. And sadly, there's no other way as to consult them, if you want a good (winning) end product in a reasonable time frame.

Conclusion: I have no doubt Honda will get there, the only question is if they can do before it's too late. As we all know, the other manufacturers are running away. And thats why EB mentioned the F1 culture...

[Thunder]

So about that new PU and how one can not expect it to work....
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/rena ... it-875729/

[hurril]

So about that new PU and how one can not expect it to work....
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/rena ... it-875729/

This is about the Renault engine. I'm sorry but I'm not getting your point.

[Thunder]

Point is Renault also came up with a completely new PU, and here we have discussions about how that is an excuse for Honda.

[etusch]

Renault has ers problem. They use ers last season too but their ers has problem. Honda has tji and vibration problems . They didnt use tji last season.
I think this is not true logic. What happened is happened. How much time it take to solve these problems is question.

[Thunder]

Reanult knew of their ERS Problems before going to Winter Testing and fixed it for Melbourne. But that should better be discussed in the Team Thread. Should have posted it there.

[dren]

Hasegawa has mentioned that Honda doesn't fully understand the new combustion concept they are using. If the vibration issues stem from the new combustion, Honda knew about it and I am sure are working to improve it.

[diffuser]

Well, he musnt know much about f1 history then! Honda seem to have managed pretty well before.

Well, I would say they can build a winning engine(PU), no doubt on that. Their problem is inovation. The Japanese are good in making things better, not so inovating them.

Sorry for OT.

A lot of Japanese would disagree with that one! I disagree as well. That statement is too sweeping. haha. I hope you reconsider.

Think you need to be careful when making comment like "people from a country" are good or not good at something. Generalizing like that is racisim.

[dren]

These quotes from Hasegawa were posted in another forum to remind us of where Honda was at during development this past year. I know I've read them before. Mclaren absolutely knew this before testing started.

----- How is the PU development for 2017 going on?
2017 PU has changed a lot from the previous units both concept wise and packaging wise. I'm convinced that what we are doing is correct, but we are experiencing difficulties and it hasn't been completed yet. That it's not finished yet at this point is considerably severe, and we as a whole team are feeling pressure too.
However, compared to 2016 where we didn't know what to do and had no idea what we should do, now at least we believe it will be quite competitive if what we are trying to make now can be completed, so the rest is about whether we can make it in time or not.

--------- as an organization, do you think you are getting ready for challenging the top?
Still long way to go. As for what we are not able to do, the issue of time restraints that we were late for the start was the most significant. Therefore, I didn't think like we are lacking the fundamental as a team, so it's about whether or not we possess the capability to recover and compensate the time handicap, and how we can achieve that quickly, that was the question. It's not that you are inappropriate/insufficient as an F1 team, but rather, elements like technology, human resource, time and budget are still far from enough in order to break through this situation/limitation.

The 2017 engines have been running heavily on dyno already, but encountering problems quite a bit too.

We've been running many already, but at the same time we are encountering problems quite a bit. We've got to crush those problems