Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[Squid]

Especially with less than half the budget and manpower of the other three.

This is a Honda comment, not a Wazari comment: Honda's budget is 100% Honda's responsibility. If their half-of-everyone-else's-budget is too small for them to be competitive then they made a lousy decision to go into Formula 1 with that budget.

Who says Honda's budget is half of everyone else's budget? I highly doubt that.

Wazari, the person whose post was quoted in the post you quoted. He's a former PU engineer at HRD.

[3jawchuck]

This is a Honda comment, not a Wazari comment: Honda's budget is 100% Honda's responsibility. If their half-of-everyone-else's-budget is too small for them to be competitive then they made a lousy decision to go into Formula 1 with that budget.

Who says Honda's budget is half of everyone else's budget? I highly doubt that.

Wazari, the person whose post was quoted in the post you quoted. He's a former PU engineer at HRD.

An alleged former PU engineer at HRD. While I see no reason to doubt him, without proof positive I think it is wrong to state otherwise.

[shady]

What I don't get is if there was never an update scheduled for Canada, why is McLaren reacting like there was? Certainly if Wasari knew, McLaren must have.... Someone needs to sit down with Hasegawa and have a conversation about "setting expectations" with the world and especially McLaren.

Unless this is some sort of dance for the sponsers.

Check out muramasa translated interviews from hasagawa, in this thread some pages ago he never said Canada, he said they would bring it when they could asap, and Canada was an opportunity but it didnt come together, which he stated clearly many many times. I think he is erring on the side of caution, what use is it to bring the new spec, if it a) doesnt deliver power, or b) blows up due to bad reliability or c) both.. this is a wiser choice to hold off, more time is more time, even if c) still happens in azerbijian there was time to perform due diligence.

[Nickel]

McHonda is already taking power unit penalties without having done any upgrades. Why not just throw it in anyways and really test it? They're clearly going to be taking a lot of penalties through this season anyways.

Furthermore, what is this story about the new engine not providing an improvement? If the test engine isn't providing gains, what on earth are they doing? There's no more tokens so there's no logical reason to not have thrown an updated lump in the car yet.

Finally, I don't buy the story that there was no promise of a Canada update. Every other manufacturer seems to go into the season with a fairly well laid out development plan, at least internally. I don't believe for a second that Honda said to McLaren "eh, there'll be updates whenever!"

[McL-H]

Who says Honda's budget is half of everyone else's budget? I highly doubt that.

Wazari, the person whose post was quoted in the post you quoted. He's a former PU engineer at HRD.

An alleged former PU engineer at HRD. While I see no reason to doubt him, without proof positive I think it is wrong to state otherwise.

I think Wazari has proofed himself enough to most on this forum. Without proof disclaiming this, I think it is wrong to state otherwise.

[Joseki]

I can't see how Honda can make a fast and reliable PU if they lack money, manpower, time and willingness to "copy". I think the results are adequate at the moment if they have less staff and money than Mercedes, things can improve only marginally.

[f1rules]

Im sorry, but if the lack of manpower and fundings is true, its no excuse at all, just makes honda look even more incompetent, naive and ignorant in their approach, my dissapointment with them is just endless at the moment.

[j.yank]

I can't see how Honda can make a fast and reliable PU if they lack money, manpower, time and willingness to "copy". I think the results are adequate at the moment if they have less staff and money than Mercedes, things can improve only marginally.

Well, if compare them as pure performance at their timeframe lines of development, Honda is doing very well. They are in their 3rd (or 4th year) of F1 PU development but they already surpassed in terms of power the rest of PU manufactures in their respective 4th years. If they succeed this year making the Mercedes turbo configuration for just one year of development this will be amazing achievement. So, lets wait and see what will happen after the summer brake. Honestly, I can't understand the game of McLaren now. This attack on Honda seems useless, and potentially very damaging for McLaren itself.

[makecry]

I can't see how Honda can make a fast and reliable PU if they lack money, manpower, time and willingness to "copy". I think the results are adequate at the moment if they have less staff and money than Mercedes, things can improve only marginally.

Well, if compare them as pure performance at their timeframe lines of development, Honda is doing very well. They are in their 3rd (or 4th year) of F1 PU development but they already surpassed in terms of power the rest of PU manufactures in their respective 4th years. If they succeed this year making the Mercedes turbo configuration for just one year of development this will be amazing achievement. So, lets wait and see what will happen after the summer brake. Honestly, I can't understand the game of McLaren now. This attack on Honda seems useless, and potentially very damaging for McLaren itself.

Not really. Ferrari last year was better than Honda this year. You are not getting the whole situation correctly assessed. Honda's PU is slow and sucks in reliability. The season is 1/3rd in and they already are taking penalties, this has not happened for any other PU manufacturer, even Renault.

[PlatinumZealot]

I think he is talking about complete development time from concept not just the years on the track.

[j.yank]

I can't see how Honda can make a fast and reliable PU if they lack money, manpower, time and willingness to "copy". I think the results are adequate at the moment if they have less staff and money than Mercedes, things can improve only marginally.

Well, if compare them as pure performance at their timeframe lines of development, Honda is doing very well. They are in their 3rd (or 4th year) of F1 PU development but they already surpassed in terms of power the rest of PU manufactures in their respective 4th years. If they succeed this year making the Mercedes turbo configuration for just one year of development this will be amazing achievement. So, lets wait and see what will happen after the summer brake. Honestly, I can't understand the game of McLaren now. This attack on Honda seems useless, and potentially very damaging for McLaren itself.

Not really. Ferrari last year was better than Honda this year. You are not getting the whole situation correctly assessed. Honda's PU is slow and sucks in reliability. The season is 1/3rd in and they already are taking penalties, this has not happened for any other PU manufacturer, even Renault.

We still hadn't seen what is the level of Honda this year - they are in process of development of split turbo Mercedes style and prechamber ignition, all of this in single year - if they succeed, this will be serious achievement. No other team has done this before. Also, still if you compare McLaren form this year with Ferrari last year, my claim is still valid - this year is 4th for McLaren, and the last year was 5th for Ferrari. This is natural to have reliability issues with such steep curve of learning.

[McHonda]

Well, if compare them as pure performance at their timeframe lines of development, Honda is doing very well. They are in their 3rd (or 4th year) of F1 PU development but they already surpassed in terms of power the rest of PU manufactures in their respective 4th years. If they succeed this year making the Mercedes turbo configuration for just one year of development this will be amazing achievement. So, lets wait and see what will happen after the summer brake. Honestly, I can't understand the game of McLaren now. This attack on Honda seems useless, and potentially very damaging for McLaren itself.

Not really. Ferrari last year was better than Honda this year. You are not getting the whole situation correctly assessed. Honda's PU is slow and sucks in reliability. The season is 1/3rd in and they already are taking penalties, this has not happened for any other PU manufacturer, even Renault.

We still hadn't seen what is the level of Honda this year - they are in process of development of split turbo Mercedes style and prechamber ignition, all of this in single year - if they succeed, this will be serious achievement. No other team has done this before. Also, still if you compare McLaren form this year with Ferrari last year, my claim is still valid - this year is 4th for McLaren, and the last year was 5th for Ferrari. This is natural to have reliability issues with such steep curve of learning.

With good reason I'm afraid. The longer split turbo has only marginal benefits and was singularly the trickiest part of the entire Mercedes concept. Taking it on was a fools errand I'm afraid, especially when you are trying to master other unfamiliar concepts such as the combustion concept at the same time and you're still playing catch up to the other manufacturers.

There's a very good reason Ferrari, even with their dozens of former Mercedes PU engineers, still completely ignored it. It's just not needed to catch or better the Mercedes design and it takes far too long to master with too many knock-on effects until you do so.

The idea is to try and speed up the recovery process to catch the other manufacturers rather than create unnecessary hurdles for yourself. Refusing to copy the proven combustion techniques in favour of running R&D on your own ones but happily copying the hardest but low yielding component like the longer split turbo is just unfathomable to a F1 teams mindset. It's purely engineering posturing instead. Hence Brown's comments about appearing lost and needing an F1 culture in Sakura.

A silly decision that could prove terminal to the relationship I fear.

[HPD]

New problem of MGU H for vandoorne.

if I remember correctly, Honda has a revised version of MGU H. They will use it only if necessary (I hope it is now)

[ringo]

from listening to this discussion; Honda's problem may well be bureaucratic in nature. The engineers may know the right thing to do and how much resources they need to do it. However, they probably have no power to influence the leadership; who may well be ignorant to what it takes to get results out of an F1 program.
This also explains why we say it should be easy to make heads and pistons in a week etc etc. but Honda just doesn't seem to be able to do it. Maybe they have a very cumbersome approval process to get the work moving?

[godlameroso]

If it was really that easy Renault wouldn't be consistently languishing behind the other power units. Renault has consistently been behind both Mercedes and Ferrari, and Honda is nearly at the same power as Renault. It's not as easy as people say, if it were Red Bull would be closer to the front. Honda is improving faster than everyone else, but they've changed their power unit to a greater extent than all the other manufacturers. They've essentially started again from scratch, what Mercedes has had 3 race seasons to develop and mature, Honda has had to do it in 6 months, and people are surprised this was going to happen? The gap to the front is .2 seconds less than it was at this time last year, regardless of what people say they have improved. Compare that to the start of the season when they were 2.6 seconds off the pace, the gains are there but McLaren is behind in pit crew and strategy which makes it even harder to maximize their opportunities.