JordanMugen wrote: ↑11 Oct 2020, 02:44
Marti_EF3 wrote: ↑09 Oct 2020, 10:29
That's maybe the reason to the rumours involving Mugen and RB spending on the PU. Less costs for Honda, RB have their "own" engine and can continue to spend more and keep part of the staff. Both parts happy with it
How much would it cost Red Bull for this approach, compared to the 24m EUR total for customer Renault units for both teams?
Depends how much Honda's engine program costs, let's assume that Honda leaves Red Bull with a fully functional and updated 2022 unit as they depart at the end of 2021. From there, assuming Honda will leave RB with their IP, and Honda is willing to manufacture the block at a price, then seeing as the engine regulations will be essentially frozen from 2023 onwards. If Honda gives Red Bull that much leeway, then I could see them making it work for ~160m Euros per year for two years. That's all of course dependent on the lubrication and fuel supplier involvement, I suppose they could justify leveraging some of the cost for more prominent branding on the car? The fuel and lubricants of the engine are a big part of the formula, and the equipment that the big petrochems have to R&D with is beyond reach of any F1 team.
Their engine program would have to be tied up with the fuel supplier.
The reason an engine program is so expensive is partly the man hours, and the manufacturing time. You are trialing a combustion concept on a single cylinder, that alone takes a team of engineers to validate, CFD department to model, a team to correlate the models to experiments. That's all tied up with fuel and lubrication engineers, they may have three or four blends to try. You have to run all these concepts in parallel, then you have to manufacture the engine, and you are constantly altering the architecture of the engine. You have to constantly iterate on the crankshaft, on the pistons, on the rings, on the gears, you have to because you have to improve reliability of everything.
Designing more efficiency into such a restrictive formula is an iterative process, you're finding tiny gains which cost millions of Euros each. The more you spend the more gains you find, and that's all to do with the talent of your team, which again top talent isn't cheap. These people are worked hard, night and day, their efforts are constant, the near burnout comes with associated overtime pay. Day and night shifts needed to keep progress uninterrupted, and you have to maintain that level of investment because you know your competitors are as well, and they happen to be a small step ahead of you.
It is expensive for a very good reason, however it is doable, if Red Bull's budget is ~320 million Euros, and the budget cap will limit them to 150, then there's a 170 + whatever initial costs they save from having Honda leave them with a competitive 2022 power unit which they can use for the rest of the year. That along with IP and Honda willing to manufacture the engine blocks for them while RB + partners handle the production costs.
If their 2022 power unit is competitive and all 4 manufacturers reach some sort of parity by then, I'm sure the powers that be would be willing to freeze the engines entirely. Then they could afford to stay competitive.
In turn AT gives Honda a chance to have a Japanese Honda driver in the soon to be sister team.
th of the season #EifelGP 