Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[loner]

Everybody's like to talk about Honda lack of power and Mercedes supposedly "prodigious " power ,Guys while you are at it can you please give me the numbers because if you make a statement without qualification it's meaningless F1 is a numbers game. From my understanding according to Max before updates in Baku Honda was 30hp behind Ferrari which Benchmark then they brought 10 to 15 hp from this you can infer that they are not loosing anything to Mercedes. Last year Ricardo had Mguk failure effectively losing 160hp and the ability to recover energy lost but he still won and Lewis couldn't do anything with that mighty merc power,I think they is a lot of exaggeration going on here

relax

Speaking in between Friday's practice sessions in China, Honda F1 technical director Toyoharu Tanabe said: "So far we have started this season with a reasonable performance and reasonable results.

"But 'reasonable' means 'not fantastic yet'. We see clearly there is still a big gap between the frontrunners and us. So, we really need to push to improve our performance to compete with the others here. We understand it's not easy to improve our performance immediately but we keep pushing."

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/kvya ... a/4368685/

[Thunder18]

From when the car goes into park ferme after qualifying to the rest of the weekend no settings can be changed to the engine. It sounds like they have torque maps that can only be selected sequentially after the pit-lane speed limiter kicks in.

From the RBR-H thread courtesy of Morteza…

From racefans.com

“Max Verstappen spent all of his second stint driving in his ‘start’ throttle map because he forgot to deactivate it after his pit stop.

The mode is used to optimise the car’s performance from a standing start at the beginning of the race or pit stops. Drivers usually switch back to a race mode when they return to the track.
“In the pit stop we forgot to go back on the torque map so I had my start map in it which was not ideal,” Verstappen explained.

“I had massive lag on the first couple – I can’t say the exact number – but quite a lot of percentage going on throttle. I had nothing, and then suddenly the power kicked in. It was not nice to drive. But I managed to drive around the problem.”

Verstappen forgot to deactivate his after his pit stop as he and the team were distracted by his collision with Valtteri Bottas in the pit lane.

“Normally I would go back on it but of course with the clutch and then looking in the mirror all the time, and the team was also a little bit shocked with the whole thing, they were also checking damaged. Normally they always remind me but anyway it’s always my job to still do it, but I also forgot with all the hectic scenarios.

Drivers cannot deactivate the mode once they are at racing speeds, and Verstappen didn’t return to the pits for the rest of the race.

[Bill]

Ioner that's not evidence hard facts about the here and now not something that was said 2 months ago you meet as well bring something from 2015. Honda, Ferrari and Renault has since then updated their pu

[saviour stivala]

‘Spend all of his second stint driving in his ‘start’ throttle map because he forgot to deactivate it after his pit stop”. How does he deactivate it after using it from his standing start?.
“He was told to move to ‘torque 12’ as he entered the pit lane, then to change to torque 6 as he exit.”
When he entered the pit lane he also had to activate pit lane speed limiter, and when exiting he would need to deactivate said speed limiter.
Does ‘torque 12’ mean pit lane speed limiter? And was ‘torque 6’ supposed to have been selected AFTER he deactivated his pit lane speed limiter?.

[etusch]

Honda is lacking power every body know that.. all eyes on their next update...

Probably won't happen until Silverstone to coincide with a Red Bull chassis update, who knows what the fuel boys are cooking up.

Silverstone means that they must use the engine 7 races.
No way Honda and Red Bull will want that.
Because Canada is a power circuit I asume they will introduce there the next spec.

If it is ready to use of course they will. New pu mean current one to pool for less power sensitive tracks or fp's

[zac510]

Drivers cannot deactivate the mode once they are at racing speeds, and Verstappen didn’t return to the pits for the rest of the race.

This is the bit I don't understand; usually if it's software you can change it whenever, fuel/ignition modes for example. "Drivers cannot deactivate" must mean by FIA regulation they are not allowed to deactivate it?

[HPD]

This article has just come out:
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/vers ... o/4397096/

A few corners after realising his mistake, Verstappen queried if the team could do something about it, but was told "no, we're stuck with that one now mate" and told to "be aware that's going to be pretty aggressive".

Verstappen pushed for the team to try to find a potential solution, and he was told to go to 'Engine 12, Position 2' to increase the lag and "see if that's any better".

He countered that he already had lag out of the corner, and was then told to move to 'Engine 12, Position 13'.

Verstappen explained: "I had massive lag on the first couple [of laps], I can't say the exact number, but quite a lot of percentage of going on the throttle. So I had nothing, and then the power kicked in. It wasn't nice to drive but I managed to drive around the problem."

[loner]

Ioner that's not evidence hard facts about the here and now not something that was said 2 months ago you meet as well bring something from 2015. Honda, Ferrari and Renault has since then updated their pu

they introduced 1 update since then with slightly more power quoting Honda people
if i understood correctly revising steel pistons gave them more strength to higher modes during race trim
now the next update is interesting...

[saviour stivala]

Drivers cannot deactivate the mode once they are at racing speeds, and Verstappen didn’t return to the pits for the rest of the race.

This is the bit I don't understand; usually if it's software you can change it whenever, fuel/ignition modes for example. "Drivers cannot deactivate" must mean by FIA regulation they are not allowed to deactivate it?

I am not alone than in being unable to understand or make sense out of it.
I was told that 'torque 12' is for standing race start and 'torque 6'' is for racing. if that is the case it means that once the standing race start mode 'torque 12' is done and dusted, the driver selects racing mode 'torque 6'. and he must have done that with no problem as everything went fine before his pit stop. now this is what I think, before he entered the pit lane he was in 'VSC/safety car mode', when he entered the pit lane he must have changed over/activated pit lane speed limiter. instead we are told that he was instructed to move to 'torque 12' and then change to 'torque 6' as he exited. now as far as I know when he exit the pit the first thing he need do is deactivate pit lane speed limiter mode. from the article it seems that the red bull car does not go back to the racing mode that was in use before driver activated pit lane speed limiter on entry and then deactivated on exit.

[NL_Fer]

Onlything i can think of is, that the menu option is only available with pit limiter enabled.

[subcritical71]

Onlything i can think of is, that the menu option is only available with pit limiter enabled.

Good luck finding the appendix, however....

8.3.2 The ECU will implement a “lockout” period after each race start or pit stop during which a number of power unit and clutch related functions will be frozen or disabled. Details of the strategy may be found in the Appendix to the Technical Regulations.

[zac510]

Thanks, well details in the Appendix aside that at least clears up that it's a regulatory restriction.

[ispano6]

I guess it never once occurred to Max or the team to pit Max, fix the setting, serve the penalty, and give Max the fastest lap and a chance at attacking Bottas for the podium. It's understandable that Max will go for the win, but sometimes you need a level headed strategist to see through the mayhem.

[ispano6]

Well at least Max enjoyed the battle and was fighting for the lead even with an uncomfortable mapping, but Lewis didn't seem phased or seem threatened after the race (even though on radio he sounded like he was). So basically in Lewis' mind there was no way Max would have passed him on merit.

[shingles]

I guess it never once occurred to Max or the team to pit Max, fix the setting, serve the penalty, and give Max the fastest lap and a chance at attacking Bottas for the podium. It's understandable that Max will go for the win, but sometimes you need a level headed strategist to see through the mayhem.

Say they come in, pit Max... maybe he comes out 4th, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he comes out further back after serving the penalty. Why do you think they were not level headed? Why do you think they didn’t think about it? Maybe they DID think about it and this was the best choice. As far as I saw, the choice was fine, they wouldn’t have ended any better.

Your same point about attacking Bottas, is the same as attacking Hamilton. If you can get past, they could maybe pull more than 5 seconds... but at the end of the day, it’s Monaco.