drunkf1fan wrote: ↑16 Sep 2017, 12:10
Wazari, the thing I don't understand here is, you're saying Spec 4 was a possibility for the start of the season but I can't see how that can be true if they are still delaying Spec 4. Okay you seem to be implying that Spec 4 will have gone through a sensible amount of testing by the time it's introduced but considering the reliability of everything leading up to spec 4, does that make any difference?
I would have to believe Mclaren were told before the start of the season that Honda have two different versions of the engine, one (apparently) notably faster than the other, neither confirmed for reliability but presumably the upside of the slower engine is they expected it to be more reliable. I can understand Mclaren taking the decision to use the slower more reliable engine. But considering they weren't limited by engine regulations effectively, why didn't they try the spec 4 in preseason and compare them, or B, switch to this unreliable faster spec 4 after 2 races when it turns out the more reliable slower engine is completely unreliable.
I can't come up with a way that spec 4 could have been used at the start of the season but wasn't, wasn't used in preseason and wasn't switched to at any point in the season up till now. if it's unreliable yet faster, they had nothing to lose by using it sooner and Honda had nothing to lose bringing it sooner.
I think, if McLaren had to choose it was obviously BEFORE making final v6 engine, eg, Honda made 2 1cyl versions - and tested on dyno
Then said - "here we have 2 variants, 1st is ligher, lower center of gravity, faster, could be bitch to finetune and 2nd, more reliable/easy to tune, but few kgs heavier and higher CoG."
Then Mc choosed nr1... and 2nd become spec4.
Obviously after hitting problems with 6cyl version for some time Honda tried to fix these and only in march-april decided to go for 2nd variant (spec4)
The problem however is that Honda were unable to solve the transition from 1cyl to 6cyl ... frankly I can't imagine why.