Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[godlameroso]

Honda has all of that, except time, but now that they get to develop with 32 tokens through the season I think they should be well sorted by around the middle of next season, challenging regularly for podiums.

[ringo]

The idea behind the merc log style exhaust was to create more room for cooling in the sidepods. As the year passed and they collected more data on the cooling at all tracks it was decided that they could use the equal lenght manifold.
The log style was more of a compromise for cooling, not so much an engine performance advantage.

Similarly, Honda can switch to equal lenght manifolds if it is they have sufficient cooling under their sidepods. If they were pushing the cooling to the limits from the get go they may have no room to play with and stick with the log style manifold.
Or.. if they decide to increase the size of the engine and also the sidepods they may just go with an equal length and get more power.

[drunkf1fan]

That would be a vey dumb decision

Only by pepole who dont know what their talking about.
The merc layout can't be reduced to the log design. Two completely different subjects.

Ferrari and especially the Renault turbo layout have many drawbacks on both the Pu and the chassis sides / the Merc layout has no real cons and many pros on both sides.

Honda adopting the Ferrari/Renault turbo layout would negate all the work they did on making the most compact PU possible and would create more 'problems'...
The Honda layout is closer to the Merc* than to the Renault, and Instead of going the short way (to a merc Layout or a similar Honda/Merc design) they would go a longer way and revert to the worst solution?

Obviouly...
But engineers sometimes dont have enough budget, time or reliable enough simulation and testing tools...
We'll see.

That assumes both solutions are possible and you can choose which solution you move to. The relative simplicity of the Renault and now Ferrari solution is that A, it works, B, it works, and C< it works. Having a 'superior' solution that doesn't work isn't in fact superior. Same way a ultra high downforce car that destroys everyone at Singapore or Hungary isn't a 'better chassis' if it struggles at 70% of the tracks in a year. Don't forget that Honda and Mclaren were entirely sure their engine design was superior because it was smaller.... the absolute best possible layout and design doesn't in the real world always mean it's the best option. How convinced were Honda and Mclaren that because this was smaller and gave aero advantages that it would be the best engine eventually?

You also failed to mention a few downsides to the front mounted compressor, cost, difficulty to implement, time required to get right, increased difficulty with reliability problems, more reasons to fail. Ferrari stated during 2014 that they considered the same turbo split Mercedes implemented, they just didn't believe they could actually achieve it. Merc said they spent well over a year and a lot of people working on it to find a solution to make it run reliably setup like that. Honda don't have over a year and they need something working and soon.

Front mounted compressor might be the better option that doesn't make it a viable or sensible choice for Honda. After this year what is their best option, another huge gamble in a short space of time on a very complex solution that other manufacturers with significantly more time rejected because of the difficulty to achieve it?

Don't forget that Renault's apparent weakness is in the ICE not the ERS and they to a large degree had the tightest back end as compared to Merc/Ferrari in 2014 despite the supposedly larger design. Mclaren are convinced they have the tightest chassis yet because of engine compromises that supposedly superior chassis has achieved nothing this year.

RBR have shown a bigger engine can still be competitive with three wins last year and good aero, Ferrari and Mclaren have both shown that a car compromised for the engine led to utter ineffectiveness of their car.

[Andres125sx]

That assumes both solutions are possible and you can choose which solution you move to. The relative simplicity of the Renault and now Ferrari solution is that A, it works, B, it works, and C< it works. Having a 'superior' solution that doesn't work isn't in fact superior.

Please define what you mean with "it works". Some people would say a competition engine wich is underperforming compared to some of their competitors, doesn´t work. That applies even to Ferrari.


On the other hand, please define what you mean with "doesn´t work". Some example of a winning car/engine/team who succeded in first season of a new project will be welcome to support your claim

[GoranF1]

Upgrade in Austin will deliver 20Bhp,even more after proper mapping is done.
http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/honda ... ower-unit/

[drunkf1fan]

That assumes both solutions are possible and you can choose which solution you move to. The relative simplicity of the Renault and now Ferrari solution is that A, it works, B, it works, and C< it works. Having a 'superior' solution that doesn't work isn't in fact superior.

Please define what you mean with "it works". Some people would say a competition engine wich is underperforming compared to some of their competitors, doesn´t work. That applies even to Ferrari.


On the other hand, please define what you mean with "doesn´t work". Some example of a winning car/engine/team who succeded in first season of a new project will be welcome to support your claim

Hmm, Mercedes did pretty well in the first year of the new regulations if I remember correctly. We're talking mostly about an engine, not directly about winning the championship largely as this is the Honda thread but you can't just ask people to frame their arguments to suit your needs to make your points for you. YOu could unfairly say that it took Mercedes several years before winning but that is just that, an unfair comparison. Mercedes took over a Brawn team that had been decimated, lost most of it's staff and not developed the car all year. It took several years to build back from a 80-90mil budget team back into a 300mil a year budget team. Mclaren on the other hand have been that big through the same period, this is NOT a rebuilding process where Mercedes was. RBR was a rebuilding process as well spending several years building up the team.

Mclaren and Honda chose to turn up with a short development time and as an existing large team with few personnel changes they have little excuse about rebuilding a team because they aren't.

An engine that is potentially a good idea but fails every other race and is MASSIVELY down on power is one that doesn't work, like Honda's this year. Another year of engines that are a potentially good idea with the potential to be fast but fail all year again is useless. How many more points would Toro Rosso or RBR have at this point in the season with an engine that didn't fail? How many points do Ferrari have compared to TR/RBR with I believe at least in regards to RBR a worse chassis. An engine that can be relied on to finish is more important than a potentially fast engine that can't finish races.

The odds of Honda with a very short development cycle being able to crack a problem Mercedes did through a huge amount of effort, time and money are pretty low. Committing themselves to what is a low odds of succeeding is a bad choice. They made that same choice this year and it backfired spectacularly. A 2015 Ferrari/Renault layout has a significantly higher chance of succeeding. But then you again seem to be framing the argument to suit the point you want to make, Ferrari's engine doesn't work because it's not competitive? It finishes races, it's won races, it's a HUGE step forwards and not that far off the Mercedes engine.

[tuj]

Honda has all of that, except time, but now that they get to develop with 32 tokens through the season I think they should be well sorted by around the middle of next season, challenging regularly for podiums.

Hilarious if you think that true.

Their architecture is fundamentally flawed and their culture unable to adapt to unforeseen circumstances. The Honda engine will not work until they copy Ferrari or Merc.

[godlameroso]

How do you know their architechture? Have you seen the details of the engine, know something we don't? They know exactly what they have to do to resolve their problem, it's only a matter of time until they implement a solution, and it's not going to take them another whole year. Ferrari were able to resolve their harvesting problem in one winter.

[pgfpro]

Honda has all of that, except time, but now that they get to develop with 32 tokens through the season I think they should be well sorted by around the middle of next season, challenging regularly for podiums.

Hilarious if you think that true.

Their architecture is fundamentally flawed and their culture unable to adapt to unforeseen circumstances. The Honda engine will not work until they copy Ferrari or Merc.

I guess I'm one that needs to be laugh at also. I think Honda will be alright next year. Keep in mind this is their first year. As for their "architecture being fundamentally flawed", I think there are a lot of ways to build these power units and be competitive. The whole point of F1 is for the engine manufacturers to be unique and come up with their own design and not copy their competition. As for their culture not being able to adapt I would strongly disagree. Their culture is extremely intelligent with enormous work ethic and discipline.

[Wazari]

Honda has all of that, except time, but now that they get to develop with 32 tokens through the season I think they should be well sorted by around the middle of next season, challenging regularly for podiums.

Hilarious if you think that true.

Their architecture is fundamentally flawed and their culture unable to adapt to unforeseen circumstances. The Honda engine will not work until they copy Ferrari or Merc.

I don't believe the architecture is "fundamentally flawed". On what basis are you making this statement?

Our culture is unable to adapt to unforeseen circumstances?? Without taking it personally, nothing can be further from the truth. It's just too bad the FIA handcuffs the manufacturers from making significant changes during the season.

[tuj]

Its been reported that Honda culture, or perhaps Japanese culture, is affecting the development of the Honda engine. Brits work one way, US chaps another, and the Japanese a 3rd way. I'm not saying anyone is correct, but when you stick a bunch of Brits on a team wanting an engine that is better than a GP2 engine and the pushback from Honda is that 'nothing is wrong', something IS wrong.

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mclar ... ure-aside/

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/120287

They won't hire the right people. Instead they want to do all the development with their own existing team. That's dumb. If you can hire Von Braun to get you to the moon, you can hire the right guys to build a V6-hybrid turbo engine.

The fact that McHonda is SO SLOW this year, and their engines SO BAD, should show the scale of the Honda screw-up here. They do not have reliability, they don't have driveability, and they certainly don't win or podium at races. My personal opinion, which is free and worth nothing of course, is that Honda will continue to languish until they copy or quit.

[ringo]

I think all these reported power increases over the year from Honda have been electrical.
If we are believe all the 20hp bumps that have taken place so far.

[Wazari]

Bringing in an outsider doesn't work in Honda culture, for that matter most Japanese corporate culture. We tried that at both Honda and Toyota while I was employed at both places and there was too much of a clash. I also think the McLaren - Honda relationship has been blown way out of proportion by the media. I do know that Arai-san and the engineering staff would have started in 2016 if they had they own way. Politics forced Arai -san and his staff to step it up one year earlier than anticipated by both McLaren and Itoh.

Honda doesn't need to copy anyone to get it right. They need testing time on the track and time for development. No different than Merc, Ferrari or Renault. There is no pushback from Honda to McLaren...NONE. Both parties are not satisfied and I know for a fact that Honda is working relentlessly to be competitive but this token rule and limited testing does hamper progress and success. It's no secret that the MGU-H and electrical power deployment is the problem. Honda knows that's the problem. Being able to test the solutions is the big problem.

We struggled mightily in F2 back in '82 and F1 in '83. We kept plugging away did a little better in '84, '85 and finally in "86 won the constructor's championship with Williams. It doesn't happen overnight and even back then when engines were less sophisticated in still took us over 3 years to get it right.

[Cannonballer]

Its been reported that Honda culture, or perhaps Japanese culture, is affecting the development of the Honda engine. Brits work one way, US chaps another, and the Japanese a 3rd way. I'm not saying anyone is correct, but when you stick a bunch of Brits on a team wanting an engine that is better than a GP2 engine and the pushback from Honda is that 'nothing is wrong', something IS wrong.

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mclar ... ure-aside/

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/120287

They won't hire the right people. Instead they want to do all the development with their own existing team. That's dumb. If you can hire Von Braun to get you to the moon, you can hire the right guys to build a V6-hybrid turbo engine.

The fact that McHonda is SO SLOW this year, and their engines SO BAD, should show the scale of the Honda screw-up here. They do not have reliability, they don't have driveability, and they certainly don't win or podium at races. My personal opinion, which is free and worth nothing of course, is that Honda will continue to languish until they copy or quit.

To summarize, Japanese are incapable of creating a successful engine without the assistance of engineers who are not Japanese and even then the Japanese cannot successfully design an original engine concept and can only succeed by copying a foreign one? GMAFB

[Postmoe]

I really fail to understand the interest in those repeated waves of engineering jingoism about how much better anglosaxon problem solving is. I also struggle with this "japanese culture" thing, with all the condescencion it implies. And yes, italians are warmblooded, spaniards have their siesta every day, etc, etc.

There is nothing inherently bad in Honda way of understanding development. Ok, it is probably very top-down (wich is something that happens in a lot of "management cultures") and the staff doesn't have the western endogamous swapping between rival corporations that we have. Ok.

If somebody thinks that this has an impact in design quality and results, this person should seriously check some history books.