Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[ollandos]

from mercedes side somewhere pady says we see big gains on power (and sound) from chance position of wastegate....
be careful .......

[GoranF1]

from mercedes side somewhere pady says we see big gains on power (and sound) from chance position of wastegate....
be careful .......

And how does your post belong in Honda thread?

[damager21]

I love Pre Season Speculation

https://twitter.com/andrewbensonf1/stat ... 2364314624

Assuming this article is true, it also indicates that Honda will continue to trail Mercedes by a big margin.

This article states:
1. They get a total boost of 223 horsepower
2. They managed to rectify their ERS problem from which they extract 163 horsepower
3. This means from the ICE they managed to make an improvement of 60 horsepower

But the article also states that last year Honda's combustion was 70 horsepower short as compared to Mercedes. Which means they still have a 10 horsepower deficit. Add to this minimum 40 to 50 horsepower Mercedes will bring this year.

A total deficit of 50 to 60 horsepower.

[GoranF1]

Found that Andrew Benson BBC article from last year.
It says 1BHP =0.016 sec.......so 220BHP gain would be what 3.5 seconds!?
Sounds to much.

[Chene_Mostert]

from mercedes side somewhere pady says we see big gains on power (and sound) from chance position of wastegate....
be careful .......

"We'll see how much louder [the changes prove], but some measurements have been made in the labs and they have seen some significant increase," Lowe said in a video for Mercedes.

"The reason for that is the wastegate was causing a sort of silencing of the main exhaust pipe, so by removing it from the main exhaust pipe we have less silencing going on of the main flow.

"In the last two years we have had a situation where the main exhaust goes through one tailpipe, [and] we have a wastegate to spill out extra pressure from the exhaust. We now have to duct that air separately through an extra tailpipe, and this is intended to make more noise. It will work."

No mention of power??

[Per]

Found that Andrew Benson BBC article from last year.
It says 1BHP =0.016 sec.......so 220BHP gain would be what 3.5 seconds!?
Sounds to much.

It's the typical error of using a single value for power, while in reality it is a characteristic that varies with RPM, ERS deployment etc.

223 BHP end-of-straight gain because the baseline had no ERS available at the end of the straight, is a whole different thing than gaining some power everywhere throughout the lap. Power-wise, most laptime can be won at the beginning of the straight, not at the end. At the beginning of straights, Honda did already have some ERS deployment available.

[Wazari]

I love Pre Season Speculation

https://twitter.com/andrewbensonf1/stat ... 2364314624

Assuming this article is true, it also indicates that Honda will continue to trail Mercedes by a big margin.

This article states:
1. They get a total boost of 223 horsepower
2. They managed to rectify their ERS problem from which they extract 163 horsepower
3. This means from the ICE they managed to make an improvement of 60 horsepower

But the article also states that last year Honda's combustion was 70 horsepower short as compared to Mercedes. Which means they still have a 10 horsepower deficit. Add to this minimum 40 to 50 horsepower Mercedes will bring this year.

A total deficit of 50 to 60 horsepower.

Honda's ICE down 70 HP to Mercedes ICE last year? I don't think so. Mercedes adding 40 to 50 HP to their ICE? I don't think so...

[hemichromis]

I love Pre Season Speculation

https://twitter.com/andrewbensonf1/stat ... 2364314624

Assuming this article is true, it also indicates that Honda will continue to trail Mercedes by a big margin.

This article states:
1. They get a total boost of 223 horsepower
2. They managed to rectify their ERS problem from which they extract 163 horsepower
3. This means from the ICE they managed to make an improvement of 60 horsepower

But the article also states that last year Honda's combustion was 70 horsepower short as compared to Mercedes. Which means they still have a 10 horsepower deficit. Add to this minimum 40 to 50 horsepower Mercedes will bring this year.

A total deficit of 50 to 60 horsepower.

In 2015 sources from many teams said that Honda had a good ICE but bad ERS. i was said of Renault that they had decent ERS but a poor ICE.

If you are right that Honda's ICE was 70hp down on mercedes how far away was renaults engine 120hp??!

I don't believe it.

Honda's ICE was probably down 30hp from mercedes at season end and Renaults about 70hp down.

I also don't expect Mercedes to make massive power improvements in their engine, they are unlikely to do anything radical.

[Joseki]

If I remember correctly Mercedes gained 40-50 hp during the winter last year and Ferrari about 50-60 hp, so I don't think they'll gain another 50 hp this year, maybe 35 hp is a realistic approximation.

[DarkAlman]

The rule of diminishing returns, without significant technological developments you can't always make big leaps of 40-50 HP. As these engines get further along in there development like the Merc and Ferrari the engine gains won't be as significant from development without major breakthroughs.

The Honda ICE never seemed to have been their problem, it was the ERS.

When Arai boasted last year that "the engine was now on par with the Ferrari" we laughed, but there might have been some truth to that statement on the ICE side of things. So Honda may not be as far behind on raw HP as we were led to believe.

Still time will tell...

[Wazari]

Yes there is the rule of diminishing returns which affect the manufacturers who have been at it longer as time goes on. The main issue IMO is that you have the factor of limited fuel flow rate. This puts a big limit on what you can do with the ICE. The boost you can run is limited, the max RPM you can pull is limited especially with fixed bore and stroke specs. There is only so much you can do with a 1.6 liter displacement, single turbo ICE with a fixed fuel flow rate. I know Honda found extra HP by tweaking their combustion chamber design. I would think Mercedes who has been at it longer has come close to maximizing their potential out of their ICE.

[ME4ME]

I agree to that. I think the same goes for Ferrari. Basically both Mercedes and Ferrari have reached a level where it becomes hard to make further gains on pure power. They now have to go to the extreme to find further gains, hence the rumors about crazy combustion pressures etc.

Another route still available to be exploited is physical layout and cooling. The general theme seems a narrow package, low CoG and optimal (inter)cooling. Mercedes looks to have had it sorted right from the beginning. Ferrari seem to plan to catch up on that front in 2016.

It's to be expected that in time, all PU manufacturers will reach a somewhat competitive level. So in that regard it's good that the current set of PU regulations will be around until at least 2020. We should have a more competitive grid from 2017 onward.

[basti313]

The rule of diminishing returns, without significant technological developments you can't always make big leaps of 40-50 HP. As these engines get further along in there development like the Merc and Ferrari the engine gains won't be as significant from development without major breakthroughs.

The major power increase in the next two years is not down to changes in the design of the engine, but down to the enhancement of the reliability. If you look close on the teamradios of eg. Williams one year ago, they were allowed to do oly a hand full of laps on full power during a race.

The Honda ICE never seemed to have been their problem, it was the ERS.

The ERS was so bad, that no one can judge the ICE, its performance was completely masked. Even on tracks like Monaco, where the ERS should really not play a big role the McLaren was not competitive unless some people say they had the best chassis...well, as long as not the same people claim they have a good ICE....

When Arai boasted last year that "the engine was now on par with the Ferrari" we laughed, but there might have been some truth to that statement on the ICE side of things. So Honda may not be as far behind on raw HP as we were led to believe.

Raw HP is not a measure. If I see, that they had no ICE surviving more than two races, some ICE not even making one race due to failures...I really doubt they can run more than one single lap on full power. Remember Canada: The ICE Alonso abused to play with Vettel also died in the first race.
If you run the engines on full power the differences are surely not bigger than a few percent. The claimed 60HP would mean 10% difference, that is not realistic. The question is how long you can run them on full power and how good you can boost them to full power.

[willmesquita]

Ok, average power is the key question. What are the figures? 600, 700, 800hp in a full race?

[j.yank]

Ok, average power is the key question. What are the figures? 600, 700, 800hp in a full race?

OptimumLap simulations produce closest to reality results (different tracks) if Honda ICE is down 50 HP from Mercedes and the MGU-H efficiency is about 30% of the other engines. This means average power about 820 HP for Mercedes and 740 HP for Honda. Of course, because OptimumLap doesn't have a Formula 1 model with ERS you cannot simulate the deployment during different parts of the track, and this is very rough estimate, but I guess that these numbers can give you some idea of their average HP deficit. The other thing that becomes obvious with these simulations is the importance of the average power/speed for the tire performance. I think once Honda fix their ERS issues the overall improvement of the car will be dramatic. BTW, this is interesting that in Abu Dhabi when Alonso did his quick lap at the end he was 0.28 sec from Hamilton but this didn't result in closer to Mercedes speed trap. Somehow he did manage nearly to match Mercedes fast lap but with much worst than average speed trap. This means that closing the gap to 0.3 sec was purely only on full ERS deployment, and I think that they have very big potential for the upcoming season.