nzjrs wrote: ↑31 Jul 2019, 11:02
LMVG_2 wrote: ↑31 Jul 2019, 09:11
Clearly quite a lot. For example an Ilmor engine won the indy 500 a few months ago. He hasn't taken credit for anything as he has barely spoken about it but within F1 it is fairly well known. It has been kept quiet for a reason. That reason being that it makes Honda look bad either way. Either the engine improves and people unfairly give 100% of the credit to Illien or the engine doesn't improve and Honda continue to ruin their brand image in F1. The fact that the partnership with Renault was more public is one of the reasons why it didn't work.
LMVG_2 wrote: ↑31 Jul 2019, 09:49
If you're looking for a link there aren't any official public statements because it has not been broadcasted by Honda/ilmor for a reason. Honda for example only say that 'Although we do not deny the possibility of working with outsources [consultants], we do not disclose the details'. If you really want you can patch articles together from 2017 until now. Recently there have only a few motorsport-total and AMuS articles which very briefly just mention that he has been consulting them
TLDR;
The best evidence that Ilmor is still responsible for Honda gains is the absence of evidence that Ilmor is still responsible for Honda gains.
The best evidence that Ilmor was responsible for previous Honda gains is 'it is fairly well known in the paddock that Ilmor worked with Honda'
The best evidence that Ilmor wasn't responsible for Renault gains is that is is publicly known that that Ilmor worked with Renault and thus was responsible for the lack of Renault gains.
I'm not saying they're completely responsible for Honda's gains at all
F1 is much more complicated than that. For example the reason the Renault collaboration didn't work was because first of all Red Bull forced Ilmor onto Renault in 2015. As a result they had no intention of accepting any of their ideas. Then after a year of poor performances (and under lots of pressure from Red Bull) they came back Ilmor. However, it really doesn't look great for Renault when a multibillion dollar company like Renault is perceived as needing to be saved by a small company like Ilmor.
Motorsportmagazine wrote:
In the meantime, several of the seasonal allocation of each car’s four engines had been used up by seizures or other failures. As for the performance modifications – which under the 2015 interpretation of the regulations are allowed to be made during the season – there are currently two competing programmes. There is Renault Sport’s own and that of Ilmor’s Mario Illien, brought in by Red Bull late last year as a consultant. Illien, one of the great names in F1 engine design, the architect of multiple race and title-winning Mercedes motors in the McLaren era, would – at Red Bull’s expense – liaise with Renault Sport in getting to the bottom of its combustion problems. Partly because of the difficult Red Bull/Renault relationship and issues of intellectual property, perhaps partly because of the aforementioned Gallic pride, this has been an excruciatingly difficult working relationship. At the engineer level it works fine and there is mutual respect, but at the management level there are so many restrictions in place, so much desire for the solution to come from Renault Sport’s own people rather than the consultant, that it has proceeded slowly. Illien does not even get to see the Viry dyno figures of his own prototype…
Illien’s initial single-cylinder study, produced early this year, was no better than the best of Renault Sport’s parallel studies – and not up to Mercedes levels. But the specifics suggested a direction he was confident would bring much fuller benefits when applied to a second single-cylinder prototype, which was ready to test from around the time of the Canadian Grand Prix. The test finally happened after the Austrian Grand Prix more than two weeks later – and showed a four per cent improvement over the current engine. Since its piston reliability problem was solved, the Renault is thought to be giving about 850bhp and a four per cent improvement – if carried over into the full V6 – suggests a figure of 885bhp, about 15bhp short of what Mercedes is believed to be delivering. The Renault guys concede that it is better than anything that they have so far seen from their own projects.
