[ 2020 ] Aston Martin RedBull Racing F1 Team - Honda

[Pany]

James Key has done wonders with limited budget and just look at the development of Renault chassis after they poached Pat fry. Adrian is too old school and stubborn. Apart from the blown diffuse era he has always started from a lower base and outdeveloped by throwing resource. His ethos of designing the car is stark contrast to Key who is all about having a driveable car.
This year was supposedly the best winter and the midfield are within few tenths.

What rubbish at their best Newey cars are always very drivable with sweet handling. Of course it needs a certain level of driver to fully exploit that which they more than have with Max. I firmly believe they can close the gap in 2021 and be much more competitive unless Merc pull more rabbits out of the hat.

This race proves PU importance for title competition. I love honda, but they are not ready to challenge mercedes. Renault engine is on par or even slightly better. The car is ok, very strong and competitive, I agree with horner

[Big Tea]

James Key has done wonders with limited budget and just look at the development of Renault chassis after they poached Pat fry. Adrian is too old school and stubborn. Apart from the blown diffuse era he has always started from a lower base and outdeveloped by throwing resource. His ethos of designing the car is stark contrast to Key who is all about having a driveable car.
This year was supposedly the best winter and the midfield are within few tenths.

What rubbish at their best Newey cars are always very drivable with sweet handling. Of course it needs a certain level of driver to fully exploit that which they more than have with Max. I firmly believe they can close the gap in 2021 and be much more competitive unless Merc pull more rabbits out of the hat.

This race proves PU importance for title competition. I love honda, but they are not ready to challenge mercedes. Renault engine is on par or even slightly better. The car is ok, very strong and competitive, I agree with horner

STR have the same Honda engine though, and Williams have the same Merc engine. It is not just the best engine.

[Pany]

You talk about clients. Other story, they just use it and adapt to their car

[Sieper]

STR does not exist anymore. It is SAT.

[Big Tea]

You talk about clients. Other story, they just use it and adapt to their car

Is that not what Merc does? The engines are built to spec and the car built around it. There is not a lot of wriggle room to change the car anyway.

[Marti_EF3]

I just love when AGAIN, on a low DF track like Spa, still are people talking about the PU giving straight line speed. Even Ocon with better tires was struggling to pass Albon with DRS with that monster Renault PU vs the GP2 engine... It's starting to be boring...

[Sieper]

Overtaking is just difficult. And Albon has fine defensive skills. That lap 42 defence was great.

The straight line speed is a choice. Merc chose more wing, s2 won a second on Renault. Renault has a very slippy car, they don’t have as much efficient downforce like f.el Mclaren (and certainly mercedes and RBR) but when that doesn’t matter so much (like here in spa) the Renault is a good package. Today maybe even marginally better than RBR. Who is to say. Slightly worse imho. But OK.

[Marti_EF3]

Also, if you have enough power, you can carry a bit more DF, and still be competitive on the straights. RBR was 0,5s faster on S2 than Renault, and was down by only about 0,2 on S1, much less on S3. So, that talks not only about having good power, also much better aero efficiency. But people still taking any chances to talk down Honda.

[Sieper]

Yes, fully agree. But here is SPa (and certainly next week in Monza) that doesn’t count as heavy as it normally does.

But, I think the Renault party mode is also more potent than Honda so let’s see where Renault actually stands after qualy next week.

It will be a very hard to predict weekend anyway. And it is justitie first no qauly mode weekend anyway. Let’s see what happens.

[GhostF1]

James Key has done wonders with limited budget and just look at the development of Renault chassis after they poached Pat fry. Adrian is too old school and stubborn. Apart from the blown diffuse era he has always started from a lower base and outdeveloped by throwing resource. His ethos of designing the car is stark contrast to Key who is all about having a driveable car.
This year was supposedly the best winter and the midfield are within few tenths.

What rubbish at their best Newey cars are always very drivable with sweet handling. Of course it needs a certain level of driver to fully exploit that which they more than have with Max. I firmly believe they can close the gap in 2021 and be much more competitive unless Merc pull more rabbits out of the hat.

This race proves PU importance for title competition. I love honda, but they are not ready to challenge mercedes. Renault engine is on par or even slightly better. The car is ok, very strong and competitive, I agree with horner

Totally untrue. This is classic "watch one race and come to a totally uninformed conclusion and shout it as fact". The Renault's were running the lowest downforce package of the entire midfield forwards. This was known.. said by Daniel and Ocon and their management. They know their car works much better in low downforce configurations, it was true last year as well. Even Mercedes highlighted they were keeping an eye on Ricciardo because they know Renault were faster than they are in a straight line for the race with that configuration.

This is downforce related. If we have to talk just speeds.. put it this way, Max was 1kph faster than Lewis and Valtteri and Alex (who we know was running lower downforce than Max was 4kph faster in race according to the FIA statistics). Then you look at Gasly and Kvyat who were also top 4 for speeds in the race. If you want a more direct comparison, look at Renault vs McLaren. The gap between those two (using the same engine) is larger than the gap between Renault and AT and even AT and RBR.

This gets brought up every time Renault has an outlier good result and then we hear "Honda just aren't up to the job, look at this extremely good Renault job in low DF conditions"... Can we bring up both Ocon and Ricciardo weren't even in the top 12 two weeks ago? Moving on.

[GhostF1]

Yes, fully agree. But here is SPa (and certainly next week in Monza) that doesn’t count as heavy as it normally does.

But, I think the Renault party mode is also more potent than Honda so let’s see where Renault actually stands after qualy next week.

It will be a very hard to predict weekend anyway. And it is justitie first no qauly mode weekend anyway. Let’s see what happens.

Agreed. Renault's quali mode seems to be a pretty strong one at some circuits, as for how potent, I'm not sure, I find it hard for us to distinguish between Honda and Renault now but Honda seem to have a good edge right to the finish line on race days. But at low downforce tracks where the Renault chassis excels, it's impressive how far forward they jump over the field (ala Spa) and to be honest, Monza they will be a force so I'm expecting a similar picture. But again, pretty hard to distinguish at a majority of circuits where downforce is more normalised between the field.
That recent interview with Yamamoto and Asaki, they think with the tools they have to compare, they are definitely second best, that's the most bullish I've seen Honda when asked this question and from what we've seen, I don't see any reason to doubt their claim.

I'm mostly just disappointed they put Albon on mediums, they had a lot of data to suggest it was the better option, so I'm not 100% sure what fuelled that decision, it was pretty clear that tyre wouldn't make it to the end with any shred of performance left... look at Gasly on the hards.. unreal pace.

[rogazilla]

...
I'm mostly just disappointed they put Albon on mediums, they had a lot of data to suggest it was the better option, so I'm not 100% sure what fuelled that decision, it was pretty clear that tyre wouldn't make it to the end with any shred of performance left... look at Gasly on the hards.. unreal pace.

I think medium was a hedging bet. Slightly faster compound and if rain or another safety car put on red or white depending on laps left. Since max has no choice, Albion on medium is insurance policy.

I think the race as usual is decided by tires outside of top 3 and Ferrari powered cars.

[Hammerfist]

Here's a novel thought; Mercedes, Honda and Renault are pretty evenly matched as power units. Merc may have the most power, but it is likely less than 30hp, Renault and Honda seem indistinguishable to me. What makes the difference is the chassis and aero. The recipe for Redbull to catch merc is to match their chassis/ aero performance. Renault, Mclaren and the rest of the midfield cars including Racing Point can't match the Redbull chassis/aero performance.

[restless]

the chassis problem for RB is due to wind tunnel they use.
Obviously they can't get good correlation between the tunnel and real track. Again and again and again.
If they don't fix this problem they'll never challenge Mercedes

[GhostF1]

Here's a novel thought; Mercedes, Honda and Renault are pretty evenly matched as power units. Merc may have the most power, but it is likely less than 30hp, Renault and Honda seem indistinguishable to me. What makes the difference is the chassis and aero. The recipe for Redbull to catch merc is to match their chassis/ aero performance. Renault, Mclaren and the rest of the midfield cars including Racing Point can't match the Redbull chassis/aero performance.

100% agreed. I'd say those 3 are at the stage where if given the right car, any of them could be dominant and world champions. Reliability will be the test we'll only see at the end of the season but for the moment, I find it almost comical that in 2020 it's Honda and Renault that have been the most reliable so far, and it's Mercedes and Ferrari being the only manufacturers with actual failures. Who'd of thought.