General Honda F1 Topic

[Wouter]

Testing day 3 is over! Honda on place 1 and 2 !! Max and Yuki, both on fire !!

[kfrantzios]

I'm curious how the Honda engine will perform here. However, varying temperatures!
Friday 32 degrees Celsius
Saturday 22 degrees Celsius
Sunday 21 degrees Celsius

Considering the last race there and Honda's performance in preseason testing, i think it will be quite good in the coming race

[Sulman]

There's a strange vibe around Honda this year. They don't look like an organization that is going to throw in the towel at the end of the year. Imagine if they take the championship with Red Bull, maybe a podium or two for Tsunoda in the bargain, and then leave. In their moment of triumph? That's very un-japanese.

It's as if there is a faction within the company that has an appetite for F1, and they're going for it.

[Wouter]

Honda complete over 4000km in Bahrain, as F1 Testing comes to a close.

Report: https://honda.racing/f1/post/honda-comp ... in-bahrain

Toyoharu Tanabe
Honda Racing F1

Pre-season testing ended this evening at the Sakhir circuit and over the three days, Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda completed 422 laps and Red Bull Racing Honda did 369, making a total of 791 for the Honda Power Unit, equivalent to 4281 kilometres. This satisfactory mileage means we now have plenty of valuable and relevant data to study to help us prepare for the first race of the season, which takes place on this same track. As with all tests in this early part of the year, there were a few problems on the PU side and the chassis side, but overall, the reliability and general performance level of both cars was good and we got through all our planned programme with both teams. We will now have a busy two weeks, looking at what we have learned and implementing any necessary changes in order to be in the best possible shape for the Bahrain Grand Prix, because we are determined to have a strong start to the season.

[Wouter]

Max and Yuki on fire with their Honda engine. Max on C4 and Yuki on C5. Yuki with full engine power.
Yuki even makes less steering movements here than Max. That AT02 is very stable on the circuit.

[Juzh]

Yuki with full engine power.

His top speed was around 314 kmh on all his fast laps, this obviously is not full power as AT had more than 320 km/h last year in Q3. Same goes for Verstappen except his engine was turned down even more to something comparable to free practice 1 levels.

[Sasha]

Red Bull wins both Championships( driver and team) and the Japanese driver wins a race or two.

In both teams the PU in 2022 will have RB branding.

But it doesn't stop Honda sponsoring both teams.
So no Honda on the PU but could be Honda on the cars and drivers.

[flexcon]

There's a strange vibe around Honda this year. They don't look like an organization that is going to throw in the towel at the end of the year. Imagine if they take the championship with Red Bull, maybe a podium or two for Tsunoda in the bargain, and then leave. In their moment of triumph? That's very un-japanese.

It's as if there is a faction within the company that has an appetite for F1, and they're going for it.

I raised a similar pondering question.

So the engine regs freeze end of the year = Near zero development costs.
Honda is still seemingly pouring lots of money and resources right until midnight end of the year.
Honda has agreed to give substantial people over as part of the Engine deal.

So why not stay in F1 now? Little to no development costs, you don't loose so many talented engineers to Redbull, and you get HONDA on the rear wing. You enjoy your Glory.

I would have thought it's no more cheaper to pull out then to stay on. The only costs being the engine build and some staff.

[tangodjango]

There's a strange vibe around Honda this year. They don't look like an organization that is going to throw in the towel at the end of the year. Imagine if they take the championship with Red Bull, maybe a podium or two for Tsunoda in the bargain, and then leave. In their moment of triumph? That's very un-japanese.

It's as if there is a faction within the company that has an appetite for F1, and they're going for it.

I raised a similar pondering question.

So the engine regs freeze end of the year = Near zero development costs.
Honda is still seemingly pouring lots of money and resources right until midnight end of the year.
Honda has agreed to give substantial people over as part of the Engine deal.

So why not stay in F1 now? Little to no development costs, you don't loose so many talented engineers to Redbull, and you get HONDA on the rear wing.

I would have thought it's no more cheaper to pull out then to stay on. The only costs being the engine build and some staff.

Yep agree with you. Infact given the budget cap they could even make Red Bull stump up a major part of their operating costs from 22-25 which Red Bull would probably be happy to do as they would have works status.

[Big Tea]

There's a strange vibe around Honda this year. They don't look like an organization that is going to throw in the towel at the end of the year. Imagine if they take the championship with Red Bull, maybe a podium or two for Tsunoda in the bargain, and then leave. In their moment of triumph? That's very un-japanese.

It's as if there is a faction within the company that has an appetite for F1, and they're going for it.

I raised a similar pondering question.

So the engine regs freeze end of the year = Near zero development costs.
Honda is still seemingly pouring lots of money and resources right until midnight end of the year.
Honda has agreed to give substantial people over as part of the Engine deal.

So why not stay in F1 now? Little to no development costs, you don't loose so many talented engineers to Redbull, and you get HONDA on the rear wing. You enjoy your Glory.

I would have thought it's no more cheaper to pull out then to stay on. The only costs being the engine build and some staff.

It seems it may well be a back door way of being in F1 without the bad publicity part of cost and environmental.
What they were gaining as development could continue as engineers are 'swapped' in and out, and even if no paperwork (files really) are delivered to Honda, the people who did the development still hold this knowledge and skills.

At the moment everyone knows it is a Honda engine, so with very slight 'badge engineering' it would be easy to bring the brand back into the Honda fold. Quite clever?

[Sieper]

I think honda upper management was genuine when the pulled out, but in reality it may mean, RBR paying a bit more, Honda racing department desperately wanting to go on, Tsunoda arriving in F1, it turns out like you think Big Tea. Especially now with the freeze a reality.

[ispano6]

I read an interview with Yamamoto that no staff from HRD Sakura are going to Red Bull. Some local staff in Milton Keynes will move to Red Bull's facilities but Honda F1 UK location in Milton Keynes is going to be closed. Asaki said there currently isn't a contract for HRD Sakura to continue developing behind the scenes in 2022 and that there isn't a contract for them to work on E10 fuels but are working on it anyway.

[Lock2nl]

Elsewhere I read they were willing to support RBR on a contract basis.
But you can bet such contracts will become less and less likely when time goes by because reallocation of Sakura resources to other projects was probably the most important reason to quit F1. So Sakura staff was never meant to move to RBR. Honda needs them elsewhere. Not even mentioning how difficult it is for Japanese engineers to quit Honda and go overseas...

[Big Tea]

Elsewhere I read they were willing to support RBR on a contract basis.
But you can bet such contracts will become less and less likely when time goes by because reallocation of Sakura resources to other projects was probably the most important reason to quit F1. So Sakura staff was never meant to move to RBR. Honda needs them elsewhere. Not even mentioning how difficult it is for Japanese engineers to quit Honda and go overseas...

But "resources" include income, the more income the more resources. If directly as payment from Red Bull or indirectly as knowledge input 'reflected glory', side projects, or even just PR and sales networks established via the F1 side, it is not necessarily a drain on resource, it could well be seen as an entry in the gains column

[PlatinumZealot]

It can be seen as a good deal keeping in mind the engine freeze was not on the table at the time of Honda's decision to leave. With the freeze its an easier bargain to allocate some small resource to grow young engineers or farm out retired ones, to have their hand at learning the engines and exploring alternative fuels.