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Honda explains key changes to 2021 F1 engine
By: Jonathan Noble
Feb 19, 2021, 9:12 AM
Honda has explained the key changes it has made to its Formula 1 engine for this season, after revealing it has hit its performance targets over the winter.
"On the dyno the numbers we have seen match what we expected," he explained as AlphaTauri revealed its 2021 challenger. "Let's see how competitive we can be on track in the actual races."
Tanabe said that some areas of the power unit had been the focus of bigger changes, as Honda looked to make gains compared to the opposition.
"It is difficult to be specific about which parts have seen the most work, but in order to improve power and reliability, we have made modifications to the ICE, turbine and ERS," he explained.
"This is our third year with Scuderia AlphaTauri and in order to improve as a whole, we have also improved the installation and packaging of the entire PU."
Nextgen-Auto.com wrote:Alpha Tauri turned down the opportunity to update its car for 2021 with last year’s rear-end and gearbox of sister team Red Bull.
Amid the pandemic, and apart from an aerodynamic rule change, chassis design has been essentially paused between 2020 and 2021 apart from a complex ’token’ system.
However, as a technical partner of Mercedes’, Aston Martin got the green light to upgrade to the 2020 title-winning rear-end without spending a single token.
A similar rear-end upgrade would also have been available to Alpha Tauri.
"We decided to leave the rear of the AT01 as it is," said Alpha Tauri technical director Jody Eggington.
"It wasn’t an easy decision," he told the Japanese source as-web.jp. "We considered the positive and the negative sides.
"It was certainly an attractive option to switch to a new gearbox without using tokens, but it was the front of the chassis that I most wanted to develop."
Eggington said the decision was also guided by the sweeping new regulations for 2022.
"Next year’s cars will be drastically different," he said. "So we have to concentrate our resources there as well.
"Last year’s AT01 was very complete - especially the rear stability was fully satisfactory. So we decided that we didn’t need to (change it)," Eggington added.
"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."~William Shakespeare
Yes. That is last year's car with nice blue paint on it and some changes in the bargeboard area to show the new sponsor surfaces. Very hard to run a technical discussion on this. Maybe on the nose...it looks a bit thinned at the Pirelli logo, so maybe this is where the token was spend to bring more air to the floor.
What you can see in this and other launches is, that they now overdo it with the bargeboard area. In 2009 the ugly wings were removed for dirty air reduction....now we have more small wings on the bargeboard than on a complete 2008 car.
Last edited by basti313 on 19 Feb 2021, 16:46, edited 1 time in total.
AlphaTauri technical director, Jody Egginton. wrote:We’ve elected to use our two tokens for a new nose and also redesigned the outboard front suspension.
"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."~William Shakespeare