Mercedes did some architectural improvements for this year. They haven't done a major one since 2017... So I hope they have developed put reliability issues on the dyno and hit the ground running more power than 2019. Ferrari also did a big change, like they do almost every year but have lost power this time around in order to fix reliability. If Ferrari and Merc used the break wisely Honda has its work cut out still.
Mercedes had engine issues all through testing. They have greater power but greater unreliability. When was the last time you saw them have so many problems in the space of a few days? They ran on less power on week 2. They may say they have fixed the problem but I don't believe that. You cannot fix something like that easily. The Mercedes powered cars that got the new spec engine updates last year failed on the grid as well so this has been an ongoing problem with this new era of enginesPlatinumZealot wrote: ↑26 Jun 2020, 23:42Mercedes did some architectural improvements for this year. They haven't done a major one since 2017... So I hope they have developed put reliability issues on the dyno and hit the ground running more power than 2019. Ferrari also did a big change, like they do almost every year but have lost power this time around in order to fix reliability. If Ferrari and Merc used the break wisely Honda has its work cut out still.
PlatinumZealot wrote: ↑28 Jun 2020, 20:04That small reliability problem in testing was a known issue. It was not a big deal. Mercedes knew what it was going into testing and they said they would have had it fixed before Austrailia. I am not worried about it at all.
All teams are now fortunate that they have less races this season to run their engines. So fuel efriciency is going to be key advantage running more power for longer.
Unfortunately that is not allowed. Frozen spec for whole season. And I think the lockdown has really hurt Honda in fact, because now they cant have spec 2 and 3. If they could have gotten spec 2 that would have been good, but now I fear they will just lag behind still that little bit.Alexf1 wrote: ↑30 Jun 2020, 11:31Thanks for the link. Interesting. According to Wazari earlier there was originally only one big upgrade planned for this season and that was spec 3, to be introduced right after the summer break. So while this upgrade can be true it would still be close to spec 2 at the most, so minor upgrade compared to what was to come end of August. The article does not mention how many extra weeks Sakura was open compared to the other engine manufacturers. Maybe its only 1 or a few weeks which would not make too much of a difference. Hope Honda has that significant upgrade ready by the time engine nr. 2 goes in, which should be around end of August but I fear that would be too soon.