Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[Facts Only]

115mm throttle pedal travel? Are you sure thats right? If you only have a normal (~200mm) length pedal its going to rotate nearly 34° about its axis for the foot plate to move 115mm!

Or is it some sort of extra long pedal or liner slide arrangement.

Sitting here at my desk 115mm is quite hard to do just by pivoting my foot, its doable but not very nice and not in the comfort zone.

Also 40mm isnt some sort of heroic "switch like" super sensitive pedal, its pretty standard. My current race car has a 35mm of travel on the throttle pedal foot plate and thats plenty controllable even with its very 'peaky' engine.

I'm having trouble believeing the 115mm travel, without even considering the extra space it would require at the front of the car. I look forward to being proven wrong though.

[FW17]

Facts

That is a very wrong way of looking at it

Sitting at your desk is not representative of f1 cockpit

A recliner will be a better

You will get incredible travel, about 75 degrees from the vertical position. 8 inches should be possible without any issues depending on the position of the actuator



http://youtu.be/IyStdhafyZE?t=109

[bauc]

Could this level of pedal travel be also related to fuel consumption management?

Or poor drivability?

For example.

It could be another way of managing those issues without doing it fully on the mapping side. Easier rev management, easier tyre management an even the possibility of asking for a precise percentage of throttle applied in certain circumstances, turns, straights. I understand the frustration of old school drivers: even if it's beautiful and demands skills, it's what I do on my commutes to avoid excessive wear and radars.

I agree with you, I was only adding one more question to yours above

[Facts Only]

Facts

That is a very wrong way of looking at it

Sitting at your desk is not representative of f1 cockpit

Isnt it! Wow! I hadn't realised that.

As mentioned I have my own race car to sit in and try it out and 115mm/35° is loooonnnnggggggg, requires a good amount of space and isnt very comfortable. And I dont mean comfort in the "owwy my ankle hurts" way I mean in that precise movments are not as comfortable at the more extreme extensions.

It could be true but I'm struggling to see it.

[Craigy]

It could be true but I'm struggling to see it.

In the single seater I sometimes get to drive, the throttle travel is about 5cm or so. That's 250bhp.
It's actually very easy to modulate.

(An aside - http://www.palmersport.com/f3000-leaderboard.aspx - I'm currently top of that list)

[godlameroso]

Right now more than double it. Anyone that drives a manual transmission will be familiar with that kind of pedal travel because a lot of clutches have that much travel. Now imagine that as your throttle pedal.

[hollus]

The temporal resolution of the rpm data in the onboards isn't that great. There are alo very visible interpolation artifacts on the data reported just before and after shifts. So when we see the revs dropping to, say, 10400 in an upshift, I'd think that they probably dropped even lower for a moment, maybe 10200, before data processing catches up an spits the number we see in the screen. The same goes for the moment before the shift, the higest revs we get on screen are probably a bit lower than the real maximum value.

[godlameroso]

So then the power units have a useful(efficient) powerband of between 8,700 - 12,500 best case scenario?

Similar more or less to this crude drawing I made using completely fabricated power units so no one thinks I'm quoting official figures.

[henry]

Mercedes do drop below 10500, at least on a qualification lap. If you watch the qualification lap from Abu Dhabi you will see the upshift at about 11800 to 10300. This different from earlier in the year when it was 12000 to 10500. They have steadily lowered the upshift RPM over the course of the formula, in the first year it was nearer 12600.

Also if you watch Laps you will see Mercedes spend a lot of time away from the peak RPM and "peak" power, around 40% of the lap at Spain for instance. There is lots of part throttle, low RPM, running in this formula, and hence lots of opportunity to be more efficient.

This is team/gearbox/gearing dependent. The Mercedes factory team usually shift up at 11800rpm, and have been doing so practically all season in 2016. With the same engine, the Force India quite often changes up at 12700rpm.

The Force India and Honda engines are the ones from the grid that I've noticed changing up at the highest RPM - usually between 12500 and 12900. The Mercedes (factory) is the lowest I've noticed.

All of this is from the onboard footage.

I had only looked at the Mercedes onboards since the assertion from ENGINE TUNER was that no team allowed revs to drop below 10500. It is clear that they do.

Earlier this year Hollus made an excellent thread with gear ratios for 2016. It is clear from that that Force India have much wider spacing of their lower ratios than Mercedes. This would require them to run to higher revs, at least in the lower gears. This simple choice will have led to them having poorer economy than Mercedes, and a little less performance since for part of every acceleration phase they will run at higher revs and hence lower power. Because gear ratios were fixed for the season Force India have had to stick with that for 21 races.

Next year everyone gets 2 goes at setting gear ratios. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

[mrluke]

So then the power units have a useful(efficient) powerband of between 8,700 - 12,500 best case scenario?

Similar more or less to this crude drawing I made using completely fabricated power units so no one thinks I'm quoting official figures.

http://i.imgur.com/6I8kEFb.jpg

[Pierce89]

So then the power units have a useful(efficient) powerband of between 8,700 - 12,500 best case scenario?

Similar more or less to this crude drawing I made using completely fabricated power units so no one thinks I'm quoting official figures.

http://i.imgur.com/6I8kEFb.jpg

Even though this is totally fictional, I'll bite. Why is the current Honda well above the 2015 Ferrari, when Honda and STR have both described them as nearly neck and neck?

[bill shoe]

Wazari mentioned accel travel of 115 mm for MP4/30, and 40 mm for MP4/4. Remember the MP4/4 was hamstrung by the largest workaround/countermeasure/awkward feature in the history of motor racing: the need to heel-and-toe during downshifts. This is what limited previous-gen racecars to ~ 40mm.

Once modern-era race cars syncronized the engine and transmission automatically, it was not necessary to keep the accel travel short to match the brake pedal for heel-and-toe. Therefore the accel travel became long to enable better accel modulation. That's the whole story.

Today, race cars with auto-sync'd engine/trannies and short accel travel (~ 40 mm?) have either 1. less power than F1 and/or 2. an adherence to tradition over speed (i.e. they are spec cars which do not have to compete against other cars).

[godlameroso]

So then the power units have a useful(efficient) powerband of between 8,700 - 12,500 best case scenario?

Similar more or less to this crude drawing I made using completely fabricated power units so no one thinks I'm quoting official figures.

http://i.imgur.com/6I8kEFb.jpg

Even though this is totally fictional, I'll bite. Why is the current Honda well above the 2015 Ferrari, when Honda and STR have both described them as nearly neck and neck?

Of course it's fictional, it's only stated everywhere...

Look at the area of the power band, not just peak power. People focus too much on peak and not the power band, if ENGINE TUNER really is an engine tuner he'll tell you exactly the same thing. Don't get too caught up in the numbers look at the curve.

[Joseki]

Wazari, I have a pretty straightforward question that hopefully you can answer with a "yes" or "no" if it's not too much for you to say here. Anyway, the question is: are the data Pirelli (I believe) showed some time ago regarding projected power increase (in %) from to 2015 to 2017 real?

I'm asking you this 'cause many believed on the internet there were some fake numbers in there (and obviously 'cause there was an interesting +22% that I suspected was Honda).

[hemichromis]

Wazari, I have a pretty straightforward question that hopefully you can answer with a "yes" or "no" if it's not too much for you to say here. Anyway, the question is: are the data Pirelli (I believe) showed some time ago regarding projected power increase (in %) from to 2015 to 2017 real?

I'm asking you this 'cause many believed on the internet there were some fake numbers in there (and obviously 'cause there was an interesting +22% that I suspected was Honda).

The largest figure would probably have been Manor; 2014 Ferrari engine (end of 2015) to 2017 Mercedes engine.