Honda - another disaster ?
Discussion
Whilst it was heartening to see McLaren do well in Hungary, like many have said, Hungary is an odd circuit and tends to throw up unusual results.
Jenson Button's first win in a Honda, Damon Hill nearly winning in an Arrows etc.
It's a circuit that doesn't rely on power and is light on fuel consumption, so the engine grunt appears to be less of an issue.
Good to see they made the most of the opportunity though.
Jenson Button's first win in a Honda, Damon Hill nearly winning in an Arrows etc.
It's a circuit that doesn't rely on power and is light on fuel consumption, so the engine grunt appears to be less of an issue.
Good to see they made the most of the opportunity though.
Vaud said:
CraigyMc said:
It's not just outright power - they need more economy too.
So aside from power, reliability and economy, it's ok? (though to be fair it seemed reliable this w/e)I wonder how close the weight, temperature/packaging and CoG are to the targets.
I've noticed that all the teams try to run as little fuel as possible - an extreme example being Williams. They have a low-drag package on their car and are starting the races a lot lighter than other cars on the basis that their lower drag is also giving them better fuel economy. It's hurting them in cornering, braking, and with tyre warm up. Opposite end of the spectrum: McLaren are forced to run heavy fuel loads because the Honda is thirsty. The fact that they are competitive at all is testament to the McLaren chassis being fundamentally a good downforce:drag compromise.
Even if Honda lost a little peak power, if they gained economy to offset it, the power to weight ratio of the car would get better for race starts, not worse.
The only place nobody cares about economy is for quali.
swisstoni said:
Really good to see both engines survive the race. Not much but it's better than usual.
Not much?6th for Alonso was quite impressive and not to.mention the fastest lap of the race.
Although the circuit played a large part in that and I expect Spa to be back to normal.
Edited by cuprabob on Monday 31st July 13:16
cuprabob said:
Not much?
6th for Alonso was quite impressive and not to.mention the fastest lap of the race.
Although the circuit played a large part in that and I expect Spa to be back to normal.
The car only did well due to the nature of the circuit and also because it is hard to get past.6th for Alonso was quite impressive and not to.mention the fastest lap of the race.
Although the circuit played a large part in that and I expect Spa to be back to normal.
Edited by cuprabob on Monday 31st July 13:16
Normal service will be resumed at Spa
cuprabob said:
swisstoni said:
Really good to see both engines survive the race. Not much but it's better than usual.
Not much?6th for Alonso was quite impressive and not to.mention the fastest lap of the race.
Although the circuit played a large part in that and I expect Spa to be back to normal.
At yesterday's race, the fastest lap was Alonso having a bit of a play with the engine modes. Have a look at the lap time comparison with Max here:
http://en.mclarenf-1.com/index.php?page=chart&...
Whilst he was losing around a second per lap to Max in the 1st stint, he was stuck behind Sainz. However, Max had fresher tyres in the 2nd stint but Alonso lost 14.5 seconds in 10 laps (lap 45-55). Even accounting for fresher tyres, that would still put the deficit north of 1s/lap as the fuel loads come down. From lap 59 on, he's doing several slow laps followed by fast laps. I can only surmise he was fuel saving or charging the batteries.
The deficit (to RB) is similar to Mercedes last year at this track in terms of race pace, so I can only hope Honda kick on from now. I'm not sure the big upgrade is going to come in Spa, but maybe Suzuka?
The Renault in the pesky Hulk's hands was a quicker 'best of the rest' car than McLaren at this race I thought. Very fortunate to have him suffer the grid drop and capitalise on that.
Dr Z said:
I can only hope Honda kick on from now
They've got no other choice really. I think if Honda had done the deal with Sauber then you could've seen them end the McLaren agreement opening them up to get an engine from a Ford Fiesta or Lada Riva. Anything but a Honda basically.But now that's fallen through, well it's like a loveless marriage where both partners can't afford to divorce each other. So they have to stick together until one of them can end it. However I can imagine McLaren putting a load of pressure on Honda to come back with something extraordinary. Not so much for results, but in order to keep Alonso at the team.
If ilmore are working on the engine and reliability when are they going to introduce that spec 4 engine as I've read they have it on their dyno and improving it rather quickly!
Mclaren could well gain a hell of a lot of points after the summer break! As I doubt ilmore will stop working on the engine during those 3 week off and Honda surely won't sit still
Mclaren could well gain a hell of a lot of points after the summer break! As I doubt ilmore will stop working on the engine during those 3 week off and Honda surely won't sit still
rubystone said:
Me too. Ilmor are looking for a partner to bankroll development for the 2021engine but afaik Honda rebuffed outside assistance...
They did but Mclaren gave them an ultimatum to find performance and reliability themselves by a certain date or accept outside help. They introduced the next spec engine, which was Honda's own work, and it proved even more under powered and unreliable.Which left Honda with no choice but to accept outside help.
Whether Mclaren ever truly had an alternative 2018 engine lined up to call Honda's bluff, only they know, but they clearly had some big leverage somewhere to get this outside help accepted with Honda's corporate culture what it is blocking these sort of things usually.
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