Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[isullivan]

Looking and listening to FP2 ALO onboards, the engine sounds like the previous years Honda with the downshifts and off throttle sound, they are not running the full revs and the charging is very poor. I don't think they are able to super clip at all, probably trying to super clip is what is causing the vibrations and lockups.

[maddim]

Adding to the matter...
A company like Honda (or else) surely know how to produce an ICE in combination with electrical power assist and power regeneration.
Also the vibrations sure where passed to the chassis builder to accommodate and dampened them. The thing is that everything is new in AM factory, and everything produced late as it seems for various sources that Andrean Newey changed almost everything when joined.
The thing that the team principals in all fields of AM where "playing" rolling chairs all this time of course didn't help either.
All this and what comes to my mind is a very similar example of 1999. BAR was producing in new facilities (new company) new staff and lots of money (biggest budget if I'm not mistaken that year) with a proven engine used also in other two teams that they even got podiums and the BAR01 was all the time smashed into pieces by vibrations and resonation. They couldn't make the chassis work with the engine. They had to be helped by the Honda engineers in 2000 in order to diminish all vibration problems. It was the integration of the engine to the chassis and not one of them. And all year couldn't fix it.
Maybe it is something similar here. The integration of these too complex devices in F1 2026 that needs time to integrate correctly that no one had. And this is the company's a builders structural problem. It is the chiefs that should have been more careful and less arrogant to see that time is running out. We must be at least able to hit the track and not chasing tenths of a machine that cannot run at all.
Because my fear is that this is the case, surely AN is not the appropriate team principal to handle it. And the problem lies of course to the owner Stroll as this team used to be very efficient and from his time there it has been a mess.

[PowerandtheGlory]

The question is.. and i tread carefully for fear of the usual innane reprisals.. how can Honda provide AM which such a poorly prepared powerplant and not enough batteries.. at the start of a rules change.. look at Audi, at Redbull Ford… the car is 5-6 second off pace in practice- that is being lapped about lap 15 in the race.. if they make the start. All those engineers and staff have gone round the world on a folly.. if this was a supplier to another company or organisation in another business… gutted for AM. Newey and Lawrence must be fuming..

[ScottB]

Adding to the matter...
A company like Honda (or else) surely know how to produce an ICE in combination with electrical power assist and power regeneration.
Also the vibrations sure where passed to the chassis builder to accommodate and dampened them. The thing is that everything is new in AM factory, and everything produced late as it seems for various sources that Andrean Newey changed almost everything when joined.
The thing that the team principals in all fields of AM where "playing" rolling chairs all this time of course didn't help either.
All this and what comes to my mind is a very similar example of 1999. BAR was producing in new facilities (new company) new staff and lots of money (biggest budget if I'm not mistaken that year) with a proven engine used also in other two teams that they even got podiums and the BAR01 was all the time smashed into pieces by vibrations and resonation. They couldn't make the chassis work with the engine. They had to be helped by the Honda engineers in 2000 in order to diminish all vibration problems. It was the integration of the engine to the chassis and not one of them. And all year couldn't fix it.
Maybe it is something similar here. The integration of these too complex devices in F1 2026 that needs time to integrate correctly that no one had. And this is the company's a builders structural problem. It is the chiefs that should have been more careful and less arrogant to see that time is running out. We must be at least able to hit the track and not chasing tenths of a machine that cannot run at all.
Because my fear is that this is the case, surely AN is not the appropriate team principal to handle it. And the problem lies of course to the owner Stroll as this team used to be very efficient and from his time there it has been a mess.

I suppose 'companies' don't know how to do anything, in that sense. People within a given company have knowledge, skills, insight etc.

Honda clearly had such people, but had mostly moved them on. Indeed, Honda's stated reason for racing is for it's people to learn and grow, which is admirable, but it seems to be happy to do that without bringing in any external experts or, this time out, even bringing back the people behind it's last engine from whatever projects they've moved on to. So like last time, presumably we will have to wait for this new team to get on top of the challenge...

[Jaisonas]

Looking and listening to FP2 ALO onboards, the engine sounds like the previous years Honda with the downshifts and off throttle sound, they are not running the full revs and the charging is very poor. I don't think they are able to super clip at all, probably trying to super clip is what is causing the vibrations and lockups.

What i found most interesting about the onboards was that when the car was on full power output, ie the mgu was deploying on full power, you could sort of hear some weird harmonics coming on the onboard. Also some slight high frequency shaking on the camera which immedietly disappeared when they let off the throttle.

[shingles]

The question is.. and i tread carefully for fear of the usual innane reprisals.. how can Honda provide AM which such a poorly prepared powerplant and not enough batteries.. at the start of a rules change.. look at Audi, at Redbull Ford… the car is 5-6 second off pace in practice- that is being lapped about lap 15 in the race.. if they make the start. All those engineers and staff have gone round the world on a folly.. if this was a supplier to another company or organisation in another business… gutted for AM. Newey and Lawrence must be fuming..

https://thejudge13.com/2026/02/27/japan ... struggles/

Depends on what you want to believe. I believe it's a complex set of things. I believe Newey did ask for changes late (many reports out there that he waited till the last minute to decide on suspension layout), and I believe Honda over estimated their ability to deliver/under estimated the complexity. But if you read what was changes... peripherals and HOW THEY ARE ATTACHED to the car body was changed... Honda should have said, no, let's iterate towards that... but maybe they couldn't/not allowed to (just do it, like McLaren days)... I don't know. But it sure is easy to pile on Honda right now.

One glaring thing that is not being talked about, the gearbox. It is rumored to have sync problems and can't handle full power. And while honda did some virtual testing, they didn't have the actual gearbox to test with for a long time accord to reports.

I AM a Honda fan... but I am also pragmatic, if it's Honda's fault, it is - and they have faults here. I am sad and disappointed at the showing. But the pile on Honda and this assumption that they are somehow stupid.... that is not entirely fair.

[AR3-GP]

The question is.. and i tread carefully for fear of the usual innane reprisals.. how can Honda provide AM which such a poorly prepared powerplant and not enough batteries.. at the start of a rules change.. look at Audi, at Redbull Ford… the car is 5-6 second off pace in practice- that is being lapped about lap 15 in the race.. if

A team would normally use 2 energy stores per car for the full season. So a manufacturer won't need that many. The vibrations during testing damaged more than one of the batteries. So they have gone through an unexpected number of them.

They have brought 4 of them to Melbourne, but two of them are non-functional due to communication errors with the battery telemetry system.

[mzso]

The question is.. and i tread carefully for fear of the usual innane reprisals.. how can Honda provide AM which such a poorly prepared powerplant and not enough batteries.. at the start of a rules change.. look at Audi, at Redbull Ford… the car is 5-6 second off pace in practice- that is being lapped about lap 15 in the race.. if they make the start. All those engineers and staff have gone round the world on a folly.. if this was a supplier to another company or organisation in another business… gutted for AM. Newey and Lawrence must be fuming..

Adding to the matter...
A company like Honda (or else) surely know how to produce an ICE in combination with electrical power assist and power regeneration.
Also the vibrations sure where passed to the chassis builder to accommodate and dampened them. The thing is that everything is new in AM factory, and everything produced late as it seems for various sources that Andrean Newey changed almost everything when joined.
The thing that the team principals in all fields of AM where "playing" rolling chairs all this time of course didn't help either.
All this and what comes to my mind is a very similar example of 1999. BAR was producing in new facilities (new company) new staff and lots of money (biggest budget if I'm not mistaken that year) with a proven engine used also in other two teams that they even got podiums and the BAR01 was all the time smashed into pieces by vibrations and resonation. They couldn't make the chassis work with the engine. They had to be helped by the Honda engineers in 2000 in order to diminish all vibration problems. It was the integration of the engine to the chassis and not one of them. And all year couldn't fix it.
Maybe it is something similar here. The integration of these too complex devices in F1 2026 that needs time to integrate correctly that no one had. And this is the company's a builders structural problem. It is the chiefs that should have been more careful and less arrogant to see that time is running out. We must be at least able to hit the track and not chasing tenths of a machine that cannot run at all.
Because my fear is that this is the case, surely AN is not the appropriate team principal to handle it. And the problem lies of course to the owner Stroll as this team used to be very efficient and from his time there it has been a mess.

Well, based on talk Newey's requested changes for the PU design might be at fault as well. If he got Honda to redesign the PU after he started working at AM it's not very surprising that it isn't a polished design at the moment.

[bigblue]

Fuel acts as a damper to the battery, so Honda have limited us very much to how much low fuel running we can do.

(Newey quote from motorsport.com, probably available at lots of other sites too).

This is interesting / weird, at least to me, in that the vibrations are sensitive to the fuel load (and in that case probably also the installation / chassis). I imagined the overiding factor was "just" a rough engine or some engine / MGU-K resonance.

I'm speculating, but I imagine full dyno runs with PU and gearbox was pretty late in the cycle given there seem to have been problems with both of these items.

[AR3-GP]

Fuel acts as a damper to the battery, so Honda have limited us very much to how much low fuel running we can do.

(Newey quote from motorsport.com, probably available at lots of other sites too).

This is interesting / weird, at least to me, in that the vibrations are sensitive to the fuel load (and in that case probably also the installation / chassis). I imagined the overiding factor was "just" a rough engine or some engine / MGU-K resonance.

The heavier the object is, the harder it is to shake. So the extra fuel weight reduces the vibration amplitude.

[diffuser]

The question is.. and i tread carefully for fear of the usual innane reprisals.. how can Honda provide AM which such a poorly prepared powerplant and not enough batteries.. at the start of a rules change.. look at Audi, at Redbull Ford… the car is 5-6 second off pace in practice- that is being lapped about lap 15 in the race.. if they make the start. All those engineers and staff have gone round the world on a folly.. if this was a supplier to another company or organisation in another business… gutted for AM. Newey and Lawrence must be fuming..

https://thejudge13.com/2026/02/27/japan ... struggles/

Depends on what you want to believe. I believe it's a complex set of things. I believe Newey did ask for changes late (many reports out there that he waited till the last minute to decide on suspension layout), and I believe Honda over estimated their ability to deliver/under estimated the complexity. But if you read what was changes... peripherals and HOW THEY ARE ATTACHED to the car body was changed... Honda should have said, no, let's iterate towards that... but maybe they couldn't/not allowed to (just do it, like McLaren days)... I don't know. But it sure is easy to pile on Honda right now.

One glaring thing that is not being talked about, the gearbox. It is rumored to have sync problems and can't handle full power. And while honda did some virtual testing, they didn't have the actual gearbox to test with for a long time accord to reports.

I AM a Honda fan... but I am also pragmatic, if it's Honda's fault, it is - and they have faults here. I am sad and disappointed at the showing. But the pile on Honda and this assumption that they are somehow stupid.... that is not entirely fair.

I love comments like this from that article...

"According to Honda F1 project leader Satoshi Tsunoda, almost everything changed once Newey joined the Silverstone-based team in March 2025.

“The engine design itself was not changed,” Tsunoda explained in an interview with Japanese media, specifically"

contradiction.

When Newey arrived in March 2025, his previous experience with Honda led him to believe there was enough talent on the other side to easily handle the requests he made. In reality, the talent is there, but it lacks experience, and it’s falling on its face

[AR3-GP]

I love comments like this from that article...

"According to Honda F1 project leader Satoshi Tsunoda, almost everything changed once Newey joined the Silverstone-based team in March 2025.

“The engine design itself was not changed,” Tsunoda explained in an interview with Japanese media, specifically"

contradiction.

When Newey arrived in March 2025, his previous experience with Honda led him to believe there was enough talent on the other side to easily handle the requests he made. In reality, the talent is there, but it lacks experience, and it’s falling on its face

There is no contradiction. thejudge13 is a very low quality source. The lowest of the low. The real quote is here:

Honda's F1 project leader Satoshi Tsunoda also acknowledged that Adrian Newey's arrival in March 2025 prompted significant late-stage design changes.

Since Newey joined, almost everything changed, Tsunoda said. We did not change the basic engine structure, but peripheral equipment and mounting concepts were revised. The team requested the power unit be as compact and short as possible, which led to the two-level battery configuration.

https://www.grandprix.com/news/honda-ex ... posed.html

[diffuser]

I love comments like this from that article...

"According to Honda F1 project leader Satoshi Tsunoda, almost everything changed once Newey joined the Silverstone-based team in March 2025.

“The engine design itself was not changed,” Tsunoda explained in an interview with Japanese media, specifically"

contradiction.

When Newey arrived in March 2025, his previous experience with Honda led him to believe there was enough talent on the other side to easily handle the requests he made. In reality, the talent is there, but it lacks experience, and it’s falling on its face

There is no contradiction. thejudge13 is a very low quality source. The lowest of the low. The real quote is here:

Honda's F1 project leader Satoshi Tsunoda also acknowledged that Adrian Newey's arrival in March 2025 prompted significant late-stage design changes.

Since Newey joined, almost everything changed, Tsunoda said. We did not change the basic engine structure, but peripheral equipment and mounting concepts were revised. The team requested the power unit be as compact and short as possible, which led to the two-level battery configuration.

https://www.grandprix.com/news/honda-ex ... posed.html

Still a Contradiction.... He should of just stated "We did not change the basic engine structure, but peripheral equipment and mounting concepts were revised. The team requested the power unit be as compact and short as possible, which led to the two-level battery configuration." Although it isn't clear who is saying "almost everything changed".

[AR3-GP]

I love comments like this from that article...

"According to Honda F1 project leader Satoshi Tsunoda, almost everything changed once Newey joined the Silverstone-based team in March 2025.

“The engine design itself was not changed,” Tsunoda explained in an interview with Japanese media, specifically"

contradiction.

When Newey arrived in March 2025, his previous experience with Honda led him to believe there was enough talent on the other side to easily handle the requests he made. In reality, the talent is there, but it lacks experience, and it’s falling on its face

There is no contradiction. thejudge13 is a very low quality source. The lowest of the low. The real quote is here:

Honda's F1 project leader Satoshi Tsunoda also acknowledged that Adrian Newey's arrival in March 2025 prompted significant late-stage design changes.

Since Newey joined, almost everything changed, Tsunoda said. We did not change the basic engine structure, but peripheral equipment and mounting concepts were revised. The team requested the power unit be as compact and short as possible, which led to the two-level battery configuration.

https://www.grandprix.com/news/honda-ex ... posed.html

Still a Contradiction.... He should of just stated "We did not change the basic engine structure, but peripheral equipment and mounting concepts were revised. The team requested the power unit be as compact and short as possible, which led to the two-level battery configuration." Although it isn't clear who is saying "almost everything changed".

Satoshi Tsunoda is the one who says "almost everything changed".

[bigblue]

Another interesting aspect of what's being reported are quotes like the following,

Honda had only retained about 30% of its original world championship-winning staff going into the project

(from The Washington Post)

and

"They re-entered with, let's say, only, I'm guessing, 30% of their original base staff and now in a budget cap era

(from the BBC).

The former makes it sound like a statement of fact (minus a little approximation), and the latter says it's a guess, and could be read to mean it's entirely speculation. Inevitably that 30% figure is going to take on the aura of fact over time, but it's really hard to know whether that's an informed figure or not.